YouTube Coming to TiVo

TiVo is stepping up its defense against the Apple TV by bringing YouTube to its set-top boxes. TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD owners will be able to stream Chocolate Rain directly to their TVs using the familiar TiVo front end. The press announcement doesn't make it clear whether the clips can be saved to the DVR's hard drive, but as the box is always sat at home and connected to broadband it shouldn't make much difference.

Like the Apple TV, users will be able to login to their YouTube accounts to view playlists and favorites, but again it is unsure if TiVo users will have the full gamut of junk available for browsing or if there will be a special TiVo section: The Apple TV and iPhone only have access to a (large) subsection of YouTube content right now.

The most interesting part of this is that it bypasses the TV industry's restrictive stance on DVRs and its insistence on people watching ads instead of skipping them. Add this to Amazon's Unbox, Photobucket and Picassa support and the TiVo starts to look like a pretty versatile box.