From Ars Technica this morning comes word that DirecTV and TiVo are finally back together and will have a new HD DirecTiVo late next year:

Unfortunately for TiVo fans that are itching for HD action, the hardware won’t launch until the second half of 2009.
While this is great news for TiVo fans and DirecTV users, one wonders whether late 2009 will be too little too late. DirecTV’s aggressive ramp-up of MPEG-4 HD programming has left owners of the original Hughes DirecTV TiVo with a scant handful of high-def options to choose from. As a result, many TiVo fans have moved on.

The DirecTV HD-DVR software works, but it’s just barely good enough and compared to TiVo it’s not even in the same ballpark. I wonder if there’s any chance that existing machines will be updated with new TiVo software? I don’t really want to buy another box.