MSN TV

WebTV hardware

MSN TV (formerly WebTV) is the name of both a thin client which uses a television for display (rather than a computer monitor), and the online service that supports it.

The product and hi? service was developed by WebTV Networks, Inc., a company purchased by Microsoft Corporation and absorbed into MSN (the Microsoft Network). While most thin clients developed in the mid-1990s were positioned as diskless workstations for corporate intranets, WebTV was positioned as a consumer device for web access.

The WebTV product is an adapter that allows a television set to be connected to the internet, primarily for web browsing and e-mail. The setup includes a web browser, cord or wireless (i.e. bluetooth or IRDA) keyboard and connection to the Internet (i.e. using modem, ADSL, cable, PLC).

While WebTV does not allow as much functionality as a computer-based browser, it is a low-cost alternative to a traditional computer connection to the Internet.

It should be noted that the term web TV is also used concerning TV transmissions over the Internet, usually by streaming.

The concept

As founder Steve Perlman was watching television one evening, he saw a commercial that ended by displaying the website address for the company; he often recalls this as a Campbell's Soup advertisement. He wondered exactly why Campbell's Soup would provide a web address for a television audience who (most likely) were neither interested in eating soup at the moment nor likely connected to the Internet at that precise moment.

It occurred to Perlman that if the television audience was enabled by a device to augment television viewing with receiving information or commercial offers through the television, then perhaps the web address could act as a signal and the television cable could be the conduit.

Early history

Webtv.com was originally founded by Bill Gitow. Founded in 1995, WebTV Networks began life as Artemis Research. Perlman brought along co-founders Bruce Leak and Phil Goldman shortly after conceiving the basic concept.

Artemis Research hired many engineers and a few business development types early on, having about 30 employees by October 1995. Before incorporation, the company referred to itself as Artemis Research to disguise the nature of their business; they explained on their original website that they were doing research in sleep deprivation involving rabbits. The sleep-deprived engineers found this funny; Phil Goldman's pet house rabbit Bowser (inspiration for the General Magic logo) was often found roaming the building as late into the night. However, many animal activists were not in on the joke and took offense to the website.

When the U.S. State Department limited the ability to export WebTV on the basis that the encryption required to visit secure websites was a non-exportable "munition" (despite the fact that the technology had originated outside the U.S. in the first place), they registered the munitions.com website, and set up a website offering implements of destruction.

The launch

WebTV Networks conserved their financial and managerial resources by providing licensed consumer electronics manufacturers with a reference design, allowing them to manufacture and market the client. Their profits were derived from operating the online service. They paid a fee to manufacturers for each new subscriber, allowing the manufacturers to sell the clients at a lower price.

By the spring of 1996 WebTV Networks employed approximately 70 people, many of whom were finishing their senior year at nearby Stanford University, or were former employees of either Apple Computer or General Magic. They were desperate to obtain business deals with either Sony or Philips in order to have a product on the store shelves for Christmas 1996. However, it wasn't until they told Sony that there was a deal with Philips that Sony came back to the discussion and asked to be part of the platform. As a result, the company offered the complete package (service and box) on September 18, 1996 to the American market.

The company garnered approximately 12,000 subscribers during the first holiday selling season. The subscription base grew to 35,000 by Easter, and more than 150,000 by autumn 1997. AOL claimed that a huge percentage of its traffic was suddenly coming from WebTV customers.

The initial price for the box was about US$325, with the wireless keyboard for an extra US$100. There was no difference between the Sony and the Philips boxes except for the housing and packaging. In fact, WebTV arranged to have the boxes manufactured for both companies through a local electronics contractor.

The monthly service fee was about US$20 for unlimited on-line usage and up to six e-mail addresses. The box included a 33.6 kbit/s modem which was used to connect to the WebTV Service, no hard drive, and only 8 MB of RAM. The MIDI musical instrument library was supplied by Beatnik, a company founded by New Wave music icon Thomas Dolby and fit within 128 KB of memory.

Microsoft takes notice

In April 1997, at another company meeting, Perlman announced to a shocked room of 250 employees that the three founders and the investors had agreed to sell the company to Microsoft. Bill Gates told an audience at NAB in Las Vegas the same news and received the same response. Of the three, Bruce Leak was given credit for having worked the deal.

According to SEC filings, by that time Perlman had 7 million shares of the company, while his two co-founders had 4 million shares each. For some reason, this was redistributed in time for the Microsoft deal so that they each had 5 million shares.

Microsoft offered about US$12 per share for the privately held company. To convince the employees (especially the engineering team, of which the Microsoft deal required 80% to remain) to sign up for the new owner, the founders realized that they needed to sweeten the deal, and thus gave up some of their stock to raise the effective price for employee shares to about US$18.

The deal was challenged by Sun Microsystems and others. In August 1997, the Department of Justice cleared the acquisition and WebTV Networks became a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

The WebTV client

Since the device was a dedicated web browser appliance, the cost of licensing an operating system could be avoided. The box featured a 64-bit RISC CPU chip, and a smart card reader, neither of which ever caught on for Internet clients. The web browser was compatible with both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer and the box featured 2 MB of RAM. At a time when 56 kbit/s modems were common, the WebTV had a 33.6 kbit/s modem, and used a caching proxy for acceleration capable of reformatting and compressing the pages, a feature generally unavailable to dialup ISPs users at the time. As a thin client, there was no need for a hard disk, but by putting the browser in non-volatile memory, upgrades could be downloaded from the WebTV service.

Since all software was downloaded from WebTV servers, there was no need to support legacy applications. This decision eventually caused problems, as users demanded support for proprietary file formats like that of RealAudio. Each time Real Networks released a new version - almost a yearly event, as Real Networks sought to sell new licenses to existing licensees - WebTV had to negotiate for source code, and then port it to the WebTV architecture. The file format would become available to WebTV users about the same time it became obsolete.

A second model, the "Plus", was introduced a year later. This model featured a tuner to allow watching television in a PIP (Picture-In-Picture) window while waiting for pages to arrive, allowed one to capture video stills from video camera, VCR or broadcast television as a JPEG, and included a video tuner that allowed one to schedule a VCR in a manner like TiVo allowed several years later. The Plus also included a 56k modem. In order to accommodate large nightly downloads of television schedules, a hard drive was included in the original Plus; as chip prices fell faster than hard drive prices, later versions of the Plus used an M-systems DiskOnChip flashrom chip instead. It also supported ATVEF, a technology that allowed users to download special script-laden pages to interact with television shows.

WebTV produced reference designs of models incorporating a disk-based personal video recorder and a satellite tuner for EchoStar's Dish Network (called "Dishplayer") and for Hughes' DirecTV (called "UltimateTV"). Disagreements between Microsoft and Echostar, probably due to Microsoft striking a deal with DirecTV (a direct competitor of Echostar) while still supposedly developing the Echostar product, led to a lack of support and the Dishplayer eventually failed in the market. Soon after, Microsoft discontinued the UltimateTV product, and around this time DirecTV picked TiVo's product to stand behind. (TiVo's product beat UltimateTV to market).

As an ease-of-use design consideration, WebTV early decided to reformat pages rather than have users doing sideways scrolling. As garden-variety PCs evolved from VGA resolution of 640x480 to SVGA resolution of 800x600, reformatting to fit the 560-pixel width of a television screen became less satisfactory. The WebTV browser also translated HTML frames as tables in order to avoid the need for a mouse. To address these problems, the engineers at WNI developed the MSN Companion, which was another easy-to-use thin client which used an SVGA monitor and mouse. Both Compaq and e-Machines marketed the Companion, Compaq producing it in multiple models. However, being substantially more expensive than WebTV (which at this point was typically $50 after rebate) and lacking many features that PC users and WebTV users found standard, the Companion never found a customer base.

MSN rebranding

File:MsntvLogo.jpg

MSN TV logo

In 2001, WebTV Networks, Inc. sold their subscriber base to Microsoft, and the corporation was dissolved, although the WebTV engineers continued to work for Microsoft, many of them working on Microsoft's Xbox video game system or Microsoft IP-TV technology, offering television programming over the internet. Microsoft's MSN unit took over WebTV's subscribers, and contracts with Philips and Sony were terminated, with RCA being the sole manufacturer of units. Heavy promotion of WebTV ended, and the high churn rate and support costs associated with new subscribers dropped, allowing the newly rebranded MSN TV to achieve profitability, despite a lower subscriber census. At its peak, there were more than 1 million subscribers.

In recent years, the number of consumers using dialup access has dropped and as the Classic and Plus clients were restricted to dialup access, their subscriber count began to drop. Because the WebTV client was subsidized hardware, the company had always required individual subscriptions for each box, but with the subsidies ended, MSN started offering free use of MSN TV boxes to their computer users who subscribed to MSN, as an incentive to not stray to discount dialup ISPs.

Broadband MSN TV

In 2001, Rogers Cable partnered with Microsoft to introduce “Rogers Interactive TV” in Canada. The service enabled Rogers’ subscribers to access the Web via their TV sets, create their own websites, shop online, chat, and access e-mail. This initiative was the first broadband implementation of MSN TV.

In late 2004, Microsoft introduced MSN TV2. Like the MSN Companion, the "Deuce" is capable of broadband access, and allows the use of a mouse, but it uses the television as an output device, eliminating the need for a computer desk in crowded homes.

For inexpensive devices, the cost of licensing the operating system is substantial. For Microsoft, however, it would be actualizing a sunk cost, and when Microsoft released the MSNTV2 model, they adopted standard PC architecture and used Windows CE software with few changes. This allows a standard PC to be used with relatively few changes, allowing MSNTV2 to more easily and inexpensively keep current. The new box has Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, and can access Windows computers on a home network to function as a media player. MSNTV2 uses a different online service from MSNTV, but like WebTV did, requires a subscription. For those with broadband, the fee is US$99 yearly. Microsoft appears to be devoting substantial resources to making MSN TV2 successful.

Linux on the MSN TV2

In February 2006, Chris Wade analyzed the proprietary BIOS, and added a sophisticated memory patch which allowed it to be flashed and used to boot Linux on the MSN TV2 player.

WebTV/MSN TV client hardware

Brand	Model	Type	Modem	RAM	ROM	Storage	CPU speed	CPU chip	Latest Software Version
Sony	INT-W100	Classic	V.34	2 MB (2 MiB)	2 MB (2 MiB)	2 MB	112 MHz	R4640	2.5.9.1mpeg 2.5.9.1print
Philips	MAT-960	Classic	V.34	2 MB	2 MB	2 MB	112 MHz	R4640	2.5.9.1mpeg 2.5.9.1print
Sony	INT-W150	New Classic	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	2 MB	150 MHz	RM5230	2.9.1
Philips	MAT-965	New Classic	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	2 MB	150 MHz	RM5230	2.9.1
RCA	RW-2100	New Classic	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	2 MB	150 MHz	RM5230	2.9.1
RCA	RM-2100	New Classic	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	2 MB	150 MHz	RM5230	2.9.1
Sony	INT-W200	Plus	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	1.1 GB	150 MHz	R4640	2.9.1
Philips	MAT-972	Plus	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	1.1 GB	150 MHz	R4640	2.9.1
Samsung	SIS-100	Plus	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	1.1 GB	150 MHz	R4640	2.9.1
Mitsubishi	RW-2000	Plus	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	1.1 GB	150 MHz	R4640	2.9.1
Mitsubishi	RW-2001	Plus	V.90	8 MB	2 MB	1.1 GB	150 MHz	R4640	2.9.1
RCA	RW-2110	Plus	V.90	16 MB	8 MB	2 MB	167 MHz	RM5230	2.9.1
Sony	INT-W250	New Plus	V.90	16 MB	8 MB	2 MB	167 MHz	RM5230	2.9.1
Philips	MAT-976	New Plus	V.90	16 MB	8 MB	2 MB	167 MHz	RM5230	2.9.1
Echostar	Dishplayer 7100	DISH tuner	V.90	16 MB	4 MB	8.6 GB	167 MHz	RM5230
Echostar	Dishplayer 7200	DISH tuner	V.90	16 MB	4 MB	17.6 GB	167 MHz	RM5230
RCA	UltimateTV	DirecTV tuner	V.90	16 MB	4 MB	40 GB	167 MHz	RM5230
RCA	RM-4100	MSNTV2	V.90	128 MB	none	64 MB	733 MHz	Celeron

External links

• MSN TV Website
• Linux on the MSN TV 2
• MSNTV mirror
• MSN TV 2 Internet & Media Player review
• List of WebTV/MSNTV Upgrades