Mountain View (CA) - You’ll soon be able to watch your favorite YouTube videos on the Tivo digital video recorder. Like the YouTube website, the Tivo interface will allow subscribers to search for videos by keyword or by filtering with options like featured, most recent, top favorites, most viewed and top rated. Tivo says the YouTube functionality will be phased in over the next few weeks.

Tivo has more than 3.8 million customers, but only the HD or Series 3 generation of Tivo units will be able to view the Youtube videos since the older units do not have the necessary video codecs. Of course some YouTube clips are mature and you probably don’t want your youngest kids to watch them. Tivo thankfully will allow subscribers to restrict YouTube access through parental controls.

Tivo has posted up a detailed how-to about how to browse and play YouTube videos.