TiVo and Rhapsody today announced a new partnership that makes Rhapsody subscribers' music catalogs available from their TiVo box. Anyone who knows anything about either company won't be surprised by the pairing; TiVo's been adding all kinds of features lately to differentiate itself from the cable companies' DVRs, while Rhapsody's been partnering with just about everybody, competing with iTunes (and Napster, Yahoo Music, etc) through its growing network of hardware and software partners.

From the press release, it looks like the partnership involves a new Rhapsody interface on networked TiVo boxes, letting Rhapsody subscribers access both their own catalog and Rhapsody's full music collection and Internet radio lineup. Users can rate songs using the Thumbs Down/Thumbs Up buttons on their TiVo remotes. The music will be streamed directly from Rhapsody to the TiVo box instead of stored locally, which would eat up precious hard drive space that you'll want for your shows. A Rhapsody rep told me that rollout to TiVo boxes has already begun and will continue through the end of the month to the entire TiVo user base.

While the partnership might not be enough to grab tons of new TiVo subscribers (as NY Times' Brad Stone argues), it's just one more cool feature for TiVo users to enjoy or ignore. Maybe you'll use it, maybe you won't; maybe you love TiVo's Amazon Unbox integration, maybe you didn't even know about it. Maybe TiVo is pushing to be a living room media center, or maybe they're just trying to make the best DVR they can to compete with the cable companies. In any case, the Rhapsody feature is a free addition to an already great DVR service, so you won't hear me complaining.