I already do that informally with friends who don’t have Tivo, and I could see combining some of the content with a show viewing party (like watching the new Lost episode or something) for a sort of Tivo party. The problem I have is that it wasn’t clear during signup that they wanted the parties hosted on a particular day, at a particular time range. After I signed up, I got that info — that it *had* to be Saturday afternoon/evening — and since I already am hosting a vintage ball then, I couldn’t do the Tivo thing.

It also appeared that part of this was meant to be a proof-of-concept launch for the houseparty website; I have already gotten spam from the site asking me to host a party for a magazine I’ve never heard of. It’s theoretically a fundraising party, where guests are supposed to pay a fee to attend, and get a magazine subscription and some goodies, while the company will make a donation to the charity.

Now, the Tivo party also offers a discounted Tivo subscription/box deal for the attendees, but I expect that link will be circulated the way other promos usually are. But really, the biggest downside of all of this is that I don’t *have* that many friends who don’t already have Tivo. The ones that don’t either know all about it but don’t want it, or flat out don’t do any TV watching and don’t want to. Here at the northern tip of Silicon Valley, the parties are a hard sell.