The one thing stopping me from taking the HD leap, quite frankly, is that inability to record HD programming on a DVR. I’m sure that most people feel that way because TIVO and DirecTV have thumbed their nose at the entertainment industry and announced an HD TIVO which will be coming out sometime in second half of 2009. Yeah baby. Looks like Christmas next year is going to be an expensive one for Santa.

“We have had a very successful history with DIRECTV. Together we brought the TiVo experience to millions of DIRECTV customers and now we look forward to launching a next generation product that uses TiVo’s latest features to truly showcase DIRECTV’s broad selection of high-definition programming — all stitched together with the elegance of TiVo’s renowned user experience,” said Tom Rogers, TiVo’s CEO and president.

I’m guessing, that the only real way to make this happen is to DRM the hell out of the unit, so you can bet that TIVO to Go will either be disabled on HD units or may be going by the wayside altogether. Just speculation on my part, but will the MPAA and AMPAS just sit by and let digital HD be recorded and output on other devices without serious DRM or by demanding some sort of pound of digital flesh? They just don’t get it. But thankfully, TIVO and DirecTV are starting to.

Hat Tip – The Big E by way of Broadcast Newsroom