TiVo has finally dropped the price on the HD and HD XL DVRs. These models have been rocking their initial MSRP for years now, but now they can be had for a little bit less. The 160GB HD model is now $249 and the 1TB model, $499 down from $599. Of course you still have to pay a monthly fee to use these DVRs, but I’m not one to snub a modest price drop.

Here’s a story I first heard on Figure 4 Daily last night while farming for mageweave (no, I’m not lying): not only have DVRs not ruined the TV businesses, as we had been led to believe for so many years, but it turns out that the delayed viewings, and more accurate ratings, have given the networks exactly what they’ve always wanted. That, of course, is the opportunity to squeeze more money out of their advertisers.

TiVo users have known that Blockbuster On Demand was coming to TiVo for a while, but the service just went live. So, does it have the goods to put up a fight against Netflix or Amazon On Demand that have been streaming content on TiVos for months already? Nope, not at all.

Don’t look now, but your Series 2, 3, or HD TiVo is probably getting the Blockbuster On Demand update right now. Actually, go look now because while I couldn’t get a picture to show this accurately, the screen above looks slightly different than other TiVo screens. It’s tad higher resolution and there is just something different about it. Maybe a TiVo GUI refresh is just around the corner…

TiVo users! Rejoice! Soon you’ll have access to Blockbuster On Demand content as if Amazon, Netflix, Walt Disney Studios, and Jaman services weren’t enough. I hear that sometime today, the service will go live on Series 2, 3, HD, and HD XL boxes but so far it isn’t up on either my HD or HD XL units. Not that it matters all that much. I’m not going to use it anyway.

I’ve heard good things about The Jay Leno Show recently, which might be why he’s improving NBC’s TiVo stats. Previous seasons NBC saw nearly 70% of its viewers timeshift during the 10 p.m. time slot. Leno has managed to improve that to only 46%, with 20% of those people watching the show at 11 p.m. instead. That number is actually great considering CBS and ABC have been running 65% and 63% respectively over the last two weeks Leno has been on the air. Maybe I should watch this show…

TiVo finally got with the program and released its first BlackBerry app this morning. The good news is that it seems to work as advertised, but let’s just say that it’s a pretty basic app and is just made for scheduling recordings. You can’t remotely control your TiVo or stream any content from it, but this app is a good start. It’s easy to use and gets the job done

The battle between Dish and TiVo rages on. As reported by Bloomberg, a judge has ruled that Dish and EchoStar must pay TiVo around $200 million for continuing to provide DVR service to its customers after being told to stop because it was violating TiVo’s patents. Dish and EchoStar plan to appeal the ruling.

The new ruling brings Dish and EchoStar’s total payments to TiVo to around $400 million in damages and other fees after a five year legal battle. In this latest round, Dish and EchoStar say they tried to work around TiVo’s patents, but a judge ruled that they had failed to do so. The $200 million figure is based on a $2.25 per month royalty for every Dish DVR user, extending from April 2008, when an appeals court reaffirmed TiVo’s patent, to July 1 2009.

Best Buy and TiVo have worked out a nice deal. Best Buy is going to heavily push the DVR in all its stores nationwide and TiVo will produce a special Best Buy DVR and embed its DVR platform in a few HDTVs. This isn’t official just yet, but it seems like the agreement should help both companies.

Widgets and gadgets are the latest trend to hit HDTVs. Vizio is upping the game by equipping its soon-to-be-released HDTVs with an impressive suite of Internet applications and video streaming sites. So much so, that this portfolio will place them on top of many people’s wish list as these TVs will be better equipped than a TiVo or even Windows Media Server.

Looks like Time Warner cable subscribers may someday get the option of the TiVo interface on their DVR boxes. According to Bloomberg, “TiVo is in talks to provide service through Time Warner Cable Inc.” although nothing specific has really been revealed yet.

You can get your hands on a refurbished TiVo HD DVR for $199 with free shipping, directly from TiVo. The box can hold up to 180 hours of standard-definition footage or up to 20 hours of HD content.

The latest issue of Playboy is stating that Hulu support is coming to Roku. Not that Playboy isn’t a reliable technology source, but we’re still a tad skeptical. Hopefully the support is coming though, not for Roku’s sake, but because that would mean TiVo and Moxi shouldn’t be that far behind.

Deja Vu? Yeah, EchoStar paid TiVo over a $100 million a couple of years ago for infringing on TiVo’s DVR patents. But it seems that EchoStar didn’t follow the court’s orders to disabling all the Dish DVRs that infringed on TiVo’s patent. Now they have to pay.

Bad news for DirecTV subs. If you have been waiting, and waiting to upgade your old TiVo Series 2-ish DirecTV DVR, you are going to have to wait a bit longer. It was reveled in the quarterly earnings call that the DVR isn’t going to be available this year, rather sometime in 2010.

TiVo has featured online scheduling and DVR control for a while, but it wasn’t anything special as it could only preform simple tasks. Not anymore. The website just got a refresh in the style of the TiVo Beta Search and is now loaded with features. In fact, there isn’t much that the new site can’t do.

Got an itch for a DIY project? This one is could be fun. This TiVo case comes with everything you need except an IDE hard drive. Throw one that you probably have laying around the house, and bam!, you have a TiVo after a little help from the TiVo community. Now, this Philips model doesn’t do Cable Cards, high-def, and you still have to pay the monthly fee to use all the features. Oh, and it needs a phone line hookup. Sorry.

No one likes advertisements. But the fact is that they are a part of our society and will continue to annoy. TiVo was previously a walled garden from ads, but they have slowly crept in over the last couple of years. Now, there are ads scattered throughout the system. But are they really that bad?

I asked my wife who uses our TiVo the majority of the time and she didn’t even know there where ads. I had to show her and eventually she remembered them, but they don’t annoy her at all. I believe TiVo has found a way to place ads in the system that net the company revenue, but doesn’t really bother the consumer.