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The Upgraded AppleTV units are now in stock and shipping! These have 160 GB Seagate drives installed, tested, and ready to go. Any they’re rolling out the door.

In an earlier lifetime transfer blog post we confirmed that people were still able to move lifetime service from older TiVos to the Series3 HD TiVo. Well, it’s still happening. So if you want to try it, you can order a unit from us, ask us to hold it and email you the TSN, and then you call TiVo to try the transfer. If it works (as every one has) then you email us and we ship the unit. If it doesn’t work, we’ll be surprised and we’ll happily cancel your order if you’d like – and give you a full refund.

We’ve really had a great response to our AppleTV Upgrade Kits. As with any new product, people have expressed concerns about opening the unit – especially since it’s a nice, sleek piece of Apple hardware, and designed to be in your living room.

Good news! It’s very, very easy to open and close, and looks identical after the upgrade. If you’ve ever tried to open an iPod or a MacMini, this couldn’t be more different. The installation procedure is very, very simple and leaves no marks on the outside of the case, whatsoever.

Read our AppleTV upgrade installation feedback to see how simple our first customers found it.

You’ve probably seen all of the buzz about the new AppleTV unit. This device shares many attributes with standalone TiVos: the ability to stream audio and pictures, and to transfer video. The integration works differently – the AppleTV syncs directly to your iTunes and holds local copies of files.

And there’s the issue: it holds local copies of, say, your massive iTunes library, or video of your kids, or 20,000 pictures of your vacations. So, naturally, the 40 GB drive in the unit won’t cut it.

So we’re introducing our AppleTV Upgrade Kits. For $199, you get a drive four times the size of the one that comes with the unit, formatted and ready to go (with the usual WeaKnees extras: tools, instructions with pictures, support, and a warranty). Now you can get all of your music and video to your stereo and TV all the time, no waiting.

For DirecTV TiVo users, or for cable DVR users, who’ve never had these types of features in a TiVo, they’re pretty amazing. No more searching for a CD – the data is live and ready at the press of a remote!

David Pogue, technology columnist for the New York Times, and basically a very knowledgeable and reasonable writer on the ins and outs of technology, has written a column on the newer features of TiVos. He covers most of the networking features of standalone Series 2 and later units. It’s a pretty good overview of what’s going on:

The article is here.

Whoops – didn’t catch this the first time. The basic info from the article is also contained in this video.