[James Fee]

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1253827625082461/

"Designed mainly for getting grandma and grandpa (GM+GP) online, WebTV never got much respect from early adopters who scoffed at the whole idea of surfing the Net on a TV screen, but it did get a lot of people online who couldn’t afford a proper PC (or who didn’t want to deal with one), with its subscriber rolls topping out around a million when Microsoft snapped it up in 1997 and renamed it MSN TV a few years later. Fast forward to 2004 and Microsoft’s new MSN TV2 Internet Player can still do dial-up, but they’ve added an Ethernet port and are positioning it as a way to get online for the 51% of Internet users who do have a broadband connection but don’t want to spring for a second PC just so they can check email and read websites. Better still, it can pull double duty as a wireless media adapter that can stream audio and video from the hard drive of your PC to your home entertainment setup."



I'm not sure that these "WebTV" are really sellable anymore, but I think Microsoft has finally created a unit that might be usable. With USB, support for broadband and WiFi (using USB WiFi adapter) and support for the latest WMV/WMA and other Microsoft standards. The only missing parts are support for bluetooth and flash memory readers. Don't look for a hard drive because this unit is running windows ce, so you'll need to stream your files from somewhere else.

[James Fee]

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1253827625082461/

"Designed mainly for getting grandma and grandpa (GM+GP) online, WebTV never got much respect from early adopters who scoffed at the whole idea of surfing the Net on a TV screen, but it did get a lot of people online who couldn’t afford a proper PC (or who didn’t want to deal with one), with its subscriber rolls topping out around a million when Microsoft snapped it up in 1997 and renamed it MSN TV a few years later. Fast forward to 2004 and Microsoft’s new MSN TV2 Internet Player can still do dial-up, but they’ve added an Ethernet port and are positioning it as a way to get online for the 51% of Internet users who do have a broadband connection but don’t want to spring for a second PC just so they can check email and read websites. Better still, it can pull double duty as a wireless media adapter that can stream audio and video from the hard drive of your PC to your home entertainment setup."



I'm not sure that these "WebTV" are really sellable anymore, but I think Microsoft has finally created a unit that might be usable. With USB, support for broadband and WiFi (using USB WiFi adapter) and support for the latest WMV/WMA and other Microsoft standards. The only missing parts are support for bluetooth and flash memory readers. Don't look for a hard drive because this unit is running windows ce, so you'll need to stream your files from somewhere else.

[Chris Gohlke]

Of course the million dollar question is whether this will work with any service, or just MSN.

[James Fee]

Originally Posted by Goldkey

Of course the million dollar question is whether this will work with any service, or just MSN.

I believe it works with any service on broadband, but you'll need to still pay MSN beyond your broadband costs, unless you are using MSN Broadband.

[Chris Gohlke]

I guess I should have read the article:

"The box, which is made by Thomson, retails for $200, and costs $22 a month if you want to use it with MSN’s dial-up service, and $10 a month as add-on for a broadband connection."

Not too bad I guess, I am just tired of being nickled and dimed on services tied to the product.

[Felix Torres]

Another review available at Gizmodo:
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/micr...iew-020962.php

Of special interest: MSN Music not yet supported but they *intend* to.
Which they'd better, the ability to buy music and send it to a jukebox or flash player *should* be part of the feature set.
Ditto for interfacing with digital cameras through the USB port.

Support for HDTV will apparently have to wait til MSN TV3, I guess...
Too bad; at least interlaced component video should have been doable.