Putting YouTube on something is like a gang initiation for Valley companies. “Sure,” VCs say, “You’ve made a plastic robotic drink coaster with social networking capabilities. But does it have YouTube?”

That said, Series 3 and HD TiVo owners will soon be able to stream YouTube content through the TiVo dashboard. Series 2 owners, however, are out of luck because the H.264 used in the service can’t be added to Series 2 hardware.

TiVo users should notice the update by the end of the month as the 9.4 software update hits machines.