Now, according to Ars Technica, the company is planning some sort of a cheaper version. The Ars links tell you what these guys must have spent hours on: transcribing a recent TiVo earnings call. The juicy bits, straight from the mouth of Tom Rogers, TiVo's chief executive:

"...We continue to make progress toward a lower-priced, mass appeal, high definition unit, which will become available later this year, and will complement the important role that TiVo is playing in working with retailers to offer high definition products and services to consumers. Additionally, the TiVo Series 3 high definition digital media recorder, which is the first standalone TiVo product that is HD-compatible, continues to receive great reviews for its functionality."

More details on the status of the Comcast-TiVo box (including a rollout date) after the jump.

Later in the call, Rogers adds: "I think that, as we said in our comments, without having a mass appeal priced HD unit to participate in the real key trends that you want to see in consumer electronics today, it's difficult and until we have that product later this year, I'm not sure we're going to get the full bang from the brand marketing we are doing."

That marketing, according to Rogers, is all those crazy TiVo ads you're probably watching (or skipping) with the catchphrase, "My TiVo gets me." In conjunction with that,the company is running a special deal on its Web site: $200 off the HDTV Series 3,through June 16 or until supplies run out. I suspect that if supplies were in any danger of running out, they wouldn't be running this promotion.

With that, the only remaining question is the status of the delayed Comcast-TiVo partnership and rollout of the TiVo-Comcast(ic) box. Rogers helpfully answers it:

"They [Comcast] are very hard at work making sure what I call the rocket science phase of this project, which is the translation into software of the TiVo applications in a way that they can run on somebody else's box, a box that we did not devise, that the rocket science elements have been achieved and now Comcast is making sure that all of this can be implemented. Trials are going well. Between now and early summer, there will be a limited number of subs that will have this made available to them, a growing number of limited subs, and then the official launch Comcast is pointing to in August."

However, the one thing he refuses to answer is the question of price. I'm not sure we can assume that there will be any large subsidies, given that Comcast has had to absorb some of the costs of the engineering work to make the TiVo service work on its own hardware. Would $100 off the price of a standalone TiVo be a fair price to you?