The four-tuner, 2TB hard drive-equipped TiVo Premiere Elite DVR is officially available. It popped up over the weekend on Weaknees and in Best Buy Magnolia stores, and some eager users have already taken them home and dug deep into the hardware and software. Gizmo Lovers points out the $499 box is packing updated software that hints at dual core support and more including Premiere-to-Premiere streaming, as well as 1GB of RAM built-in. If you prefer to get your DVR from your cable company, RCN is also apparently promising the Premiere Q and Preview extender boxes will be available in November.

The Netflix Contrition Tour 2011 continues today, as the company announced today that it won’t be spinning off DVD-by-mail rentals into a new company called Qwikster. While the plan for DVD operations to be separated internally appears to still be under way (no word yet on the promised videogame rental option), for customers things will stay the same, with one login and one website. While the retreat will probably prompt even more speculation about the company’s true plans, CEO Reed Hastings has issued yet another apology to customers, admitting Netflix may have moved too fast this time. Another sticky issue that’s not so easily dealt with is the recent pricing change that took effect last month

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging to get updated. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix.

Pantech holds no punches in its home nation, where the company’s latest handset, the Vega LTE, has just become very official. In addition to 4G support, the phone features a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 4.5-inch display with a whopping 1280 x 800 resolution. Take a moment to savor that last part. Gingerbread is at the core of this large-and-in-charge beauty, which also includes an 8 megapixel auto-focus camera that captures video at 1080p, an LED flash, a 1.3MP front-facing shooter and 16GB of built-in storage.

Just because next week’s joint Samsung and Google event has been postponed doesn’t mean the leaks have to end. A Sammy handset with the model number I9250, which matches up nicely with the baseband version in the Galaxy Nexus shots that popped up, just made an appearance at the FCC packing a GSM radio compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile’s HSPA networks. It’s also boasting dual-band 802.11n, Bluetooth and NFC . Despite suggestions that the next Nexus device would be a Verizon exclusive , we could be looking at the AT&T version or at least the unlocked GSM model