After many years of speculation, then a deal, and more customer frustration, Comcast is finally ready to deploy their branded TiVos in Boston and some other New England markets starting in August 2007, according to Multichannel News on Thursday.

[Trials] "are progressing well and will include limited subscriber deployment between now and the early summer," TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said. Comcast confirmed the commercial launch in August for Boston, Southeast Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Customers have been waiting for this partnership to come to fruition for a long time. The original agreement with the two companies was signed in March 2005 and deployment was expected in 2006.

Comcast has invested over US$16M on development with TiVo, according to TiVo’s 10-K report. Comcast will pay a monthly fee to TiVo for every customer who subscribes to the TiVo service. However, no details were revealed about the upfront or monthly costs for the unit.

Tivo’s CEO also revealed that they are working on agreement with Cox Communications as well.

Potential customers of TiVo Series 3, which currently retails for US$799 (somewhat less on Amazon) have been lamenting the absence of an affordable HD TiVo. It may be possible that, with limited resources, TiVo has been focusing instead on the cable version of their units. For TiVo’s most recent quarter, they reported a net income of only US$835K on $60.4M in revenue. Prerviously, TiVo has incurred heavy losses.

A joint venture with cable companies typically entails demands for certain restrictions, inconveniences, and control of content. It is not yet clear what the differences in those units will be, enabled by the millions in research, compared to current free-market TiVo units.