When the TiVo HD box was announced, there was a pretty substantial price gap between it ($299) and the original Series3 box ($799) but the differences between the two didn’t seem enough to justify the purchase of the more expensive unit.
After a $200 holiday rebate on the original Series3, TiVo has just about run out of stock and will not be replenishing its supply.
Here’s a note from a TiVo rep published on TiVoLovers.com,
I wanted to give an update on our plans with the TiVo Series3 HD DVR. A successful implementation of the $200 rebate through the holidays has drained supply at a faster rate than anticipated. This has caused a continued component shortage that cannot be rectified for several months (4-6). Due to this parts supply situation, we have made the difficult decision to accelerate the EOL of this SKU and focus all efforts on the recently launched, lower cost TiVo HD DVR (TCD652160). Our sincere apologies for the short notice on this decision. Please let me know if you have any questions.
The main difference between the two boxes is the size of the hard drive — 250GB versus 160GB — so maybe we’ll see a TiVo HD box with a larger hard drive added to the product lineup.
TiVo Discontinues The Series3 TCD648250B [TiVo Lovers Blog]