TiVo Series 3 with HD capabilities revelaled at CES

Check out the post on Gizmodo for full details and pics, but here are some of the interesting points:

• HD recording
• Still need an external USB wifi device, which will no doubt spur sales of the TiVo-branded one
• Support for an external drive.  The pictures show a TiVo-branded drive and it’s not clear if it’s open support for all kinds of drives or even how the drive connects to the TiVo.
• Base hard drive of 250GB.
• 2 CableCard slots — that means you can record one program while watching another.  What’s the status on CableCards anyway?  I wasn’t aware that DirecTV and Comcast were really supporting these, but maybe I’m behind the times or don’t know what I”m talking about. 

UPDATE: I did a little more digging and found more information on the whole CableCard thing.  Here’s the deal from TiVoLovers:

• To clarify, it supports analog cable, even any digital cable channels sent in the clear, without CableCARD. You only need CableCARD for any protected digital channels, to handle the descryption. And since all digital cable systems in the US *must* support CableCARD - it is an FCC mandate - then it should work with all cable systems, analog or digital.
• the unit is dual-tuner - actually, like the HD DirecTiVo it can use any two of the tuners it has, and it has six. 2 cable tuners, 2 ATSC tuners, and 2 NTSC tuners. Yes, it supports digital and analog cable, digital ATSC OTA, and analog NTSC OTA.
• And on the subject of outputs, since it was in the article and is an annoyance with Series 2 boxes: For output it has HDMI, Component Video, S-Video, and Composite Video. It has optical digital audio out, as well as RCA stereo out. Like the Series2 units it has 2 USB ports, and it also has a 10/100baseT Ethernet jack built-in.
• External drives apparently attach through a SATA port.

Link — Gizmodo

Link — TiVo Lovers