Talk:MSN TV/Archives/2014

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Dreamcast Release

In 1999 WebTV was released as a Dreamcast disc, mentioned at...

OS

I'm almost certain the WebTV classic boxes ran pSOS, not a home-brewed one. At the time I worked for a competitor of theirs, and it was generally held in the industry that they managed to be first-to-market partially by doing a great job of integrating off-the-shelf technologies. I'll see if I can dig up a reliable cite for the OS. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

WebTV classic thru the DishPlayer had a home brew OS, you're just plain wrong. I worked at WebTV from 1997 and then Microsoft through the MSN TV change-over (I left MS in 2005). The MSN TV box was based on Windows CE. The original classic box had a Mac-based emulator initially, also. Unfortunately, there isn't much published info about WebTV to cite. --Maclectic (talk) 01:24, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

2 megs of ram?

2 Megs of ram was not a standard amount of RAM by 1995--8 megs would've been a low-end machine, with 16 or 32 being standard.

This is not a PC, but a settop box. What are you talking about? --Maclectic (talk) 01:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Merging with WebTV Networks

Merge - the WebTV article has a lot of background information which would be useful to the MSN TV article. I think they should be merged to provide the most information possible on the service. --Riley 21:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the MSN TV article should be merged with the WebTV article the latter sounds more generic

This has been done already apparently. Trevor GH5 23:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Wii Browser

The Wii Browser article has a link to this article, stating the similarities between the Wii browser and MSN TV. Would it be okay to add a Wii Browser link in the "See Also" section?
-dogman15 04:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it really applies to this article, but feel free. Also, I took the liberty of fixing your line break, it should be <br />, not <BR>. –Wulf 04:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Can someone point out the relationship (if any) to the webtv being discussed here, and the WebTv application that shipped with Windows 98 that allowed some form of interactive (or perhaps only one-way) data transfer or limited browsing via data supplied on the VBI (vertical blanking interval) being received via TV-tuner cards?

As described here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Windows98/usingwindows/fun/articles/811Nov/funfoundation3.asp

http://www.cwdixon.com/support/win98_support/web_tv.htm

Articles have been merged. Proper name of this product is MSN TV. Created redirect so, for now Web TV points to the MSN TV article. --Akc9000 13:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The emulator application on Windows was purely for ATVEF (Advanced TeleVision Enhancement Forum) compatibility testing, I believe. --Maclectic (talk) 01:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

Shouldn't there be a pretty large "criticism" section in this article? --68.6.80.185 05:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

More like a large criticism section here about how full of uncited original research this article is. --Maclectic (talk) 01:59, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

And someone ought to mention, at the very least, the truly wretched reputation that WebTV's subscribers earned for subliterate boorish behavior on Usenet, perhaps crossreferencing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.224.242.249 (talk) 16:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

That should IMHO be kept in the Eternal September article.--C xong (talk) 05:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:MsntvLogo.jpg

Image:MsntvLogo.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 17:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Original research

I removed the following things from the article as they were tagged inDec 06 and have not been referenced since then.

At that rate, it was the second most successful launch of a new consumer electronics product category (behind digital satellite television).
In September 1996, Perlman stood on a chair at a company lunch celebrating the rollout of backend service software. In his typical energetic style, he promised the 120 employees that WebTV would be the biggest success ever, and that they would never have to fear that Microsoft would buy the company and ruin it, because he Leak and Goldman had agreed that they would never sell the company to Microsoft.
Even still, many engineers privately fumed, publicly protested, stalled on projects and discussed mutiny. For many, this marked a turning point in their ability to trust the three founders.

Please do not re-add this material without references.--BirgitteSB 17:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Major clean up

I found a Harvard Business Review case study on WebTV that either clarified or debunked many of the unsubstantiated assertions. Also, there is an SEC S-4 filing that cleared up speculation about the Microsoft acquisition and shareholder information. With a little more work, I was able to find good references to clean up most of the other material.

So, I think the article is now at a point where the notice that the article may contain original research or unverified claims can be removed.

Also, I think that the article should be named WebTV, not MSN TV (as a redirect from WebTV), because 95% of the article is about WebTV. Although the WebTV was rebranded MSN TV in its waning years, there is not much story after that. All the significant references refer to WebTV, and the MSN TV rebranding is just a footnote.

Sentazora (talk) 07:01, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Two issues

Firstly, the idea it self is not much to brag about: Thin clients and dedicated OS-less hardware were well-known at the time. Further, the use of a TV instead of a monitor was extremely common in earlier years---e.g. with my own first computer, a C64. The issue was not having the idea (the idea is trivial), but whether it would eventually receive enough backing, be sufficiently popular, etc.

Secondly, the article stresses the benefits of not having to pay OS-licenses: This is obviously a point from e.g. a Microsoftian perspective, but is misleading considering the free OSes available (including several Linux versions well suited for similar hardware requirements). While the situation may have originally been different, the argumentation is misleading from a modern perspective. Even then the extra OS cost would have been comparatively small with a suitable partner. 94.220.250.76 (talk) 22:46, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

People are still using webtv in 2010 to read and post to usenet ?!

I can't believe that this service is still around in the year 2010, and I still see people using it to post messages to usenet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.82.76 (talk) 03:33, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Legacy

Can there be a section to show where the tech / software from WebTV/MSN TV was incorporated into WebTV for Windows 98 which inspired Windows Media Center XP and to some extent the interface for XBox and XBox Live?