Fans of the digital video recording service can now use Yahoo to remotely program their TiVo from a newly opened portal on Yahoo’s web site.

The partnership announced on the New York Times web site takes advantage of TiVo’s built-in Internet connectivity, a feature the service hasn’t emphasized previously.

A portal on Yahoo became available today. From the site, TiVo Series 2 users with a Yahoo account can go to any Yahoo TV episode page and click on the “Record to my TiVo box” link.

That sends the programming request to the TiVo box. Broadband users will have to allow an hour to be certain TiVo gets the request. A dialup connection will need 36 hours lead time to be sure TiVo picks up the scheduling done through the portal.

Future plans for the partnership will let Yahoo users view content from Yahoo via TiVo; photos, traffic, and weather information will be available. The deal is purely a one way street, as the Times noted Yahoo users won’t be viewing TiVo video via the web site.

One group of users who won’t TiVo from Yahoo would be DirecTV customers. DirecTV isn’t going to let them use Yahoo to schedule programs on the TiVo boxes the satellite company distributes.

One Yahoo executive commented to the Times on why they’ve made this deal with TiVo:

David Katz, Yahoo’s vice president for entertainment and sports programming, described the deal as a first step as Yahoo explores TiVo’s technology.

“Our core business today exists on the computer because that’s where the majority of our users are,” Mr. Katz said. “Our goal is to provide our users on any platform with whatever content they are most interested in.”

David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.