The WebTV Experience - Exploring a BRAND NEW Unit!

[@MichaelMJD]

Great news! As of 7/1/23, the custom server I demoed in this video is open to the public! Head on over to webtv.zone for a guide on how to connect.

[@nayoniaxd]

just me or im just exitet to release and i dont even have a web tv box

[@Freakishink292]

The website works too

[@d0tbr3w]

Thank you for remembering

[@CripsyFries]

@@nayoniaxd you can use it in software sooooo

[@ImDannn]

Going back to old videos and giving updates in the pins, this is the reason why you are such an amazing youtuber. Thank you MJD, you're actually amazing

[@jbrooks4282]

Wow, this brought back some memories. My dad bought us a web TV (non plus) back around 1996? Maybe 1997. Microsoft had already acquired them and the service required MSN dialup for a seamless experience. They didn't have a local phone number to us, so the sales man at Sears signed us up for a local ISP and showed us how to input the settings for our ISP. However it wouldn't save the ISP info, so it had to be input manually every time you wanted to use it.. I put in that cryptic, random generated password so many times it is forever burned into my memory. Thanks for demonstrating this hardware/software Michael, I enjoyed the trip down memory lane.

[@ffwast]

Can you tell us the password now?

[@oqocraft2661]

@@ffwast 1234567890

[@nocturnalmayhem0]

lol i remember having to do that was annoying

[@jbrooks4282]

@@ffwast I sure could, however I still use the password as a base for current passwords, I just add variations to it.

[@L0rdOfThePies]

@@jbrooks4282 sounds quite useful to have it burned into your memory then

[@kaitlyn__L]

I can feel a new speedrun category for Doom coming up: “webTV, remote only, hurt me plenty” 😈

[@stigrabbid589]

webTV, Remote Only UV too, maybe UV Pacifist as well

[@TDGalea]

Nightmare or nothing.

[@ElectricoGamez]

Good god lol

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@stigrabbid589 hahah I love the idea of a pacifist run but I suspect that may not actually be doable, while this seems maaaybe doable if you really tried

[@ElectricoGamez]

Playing doom with a remote is the weirdest and newest kind of nightmare ive ever heard of in my life.

[@EddyGraphic]

Pretty crazy how many items devices used to come with, nowadays you’re lucky if you get a HDMI cable 🤣

[@WilliamHollinger2019]

Then they should mod it to run HDMI.

[@MixerVM]

And when a device does actually include the cable you need it's about 10 cm long these days. What happened to cables that came in lengths that were actually usable?

[@SharpMaxwell]

my steam deck dock (90$ btw) didnt come with any cable... but my monitor cam with a plug for europe, asia, and the us, and 2 hdmi cables, and a display port cable lmao

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@MixerVM ever smaller profit margins is what happened

[@robertschnobert9090]

@@MixerVM I still remember when I bought my CRT TV and it included a 10 meter SCART cable. Still too short to be usable, but they tried at least HAHAHA 🌈

[@AaronBockelie]

I used to work for MSTV at Microsoft probably 20 years ago as a lab manager for our prototyping team. MS acquired WebTV so it's fun to see the UI experience that we bought and then migrated into mainline products. We moved to UltimateTV and then Motorola set top boxes for Rogers and other cable markets until the whole thing sort of closed up. Anyway, thanks for the memories.

[@JarHead3894]

oh wow you worked on the rogers box? that's really cool, nobody has been able to find any info about it other than things like ROM type

[@AaronBockelie]

@@JarHead3894 I used to run the prototype cmts that would provision our boxes internally. It was fun kicking off rom upgrades for new development builds.

[@411WebTV]

Hello, this is wtv-411 here. I was the former manager and writer for the WebTV Wiki and did a lot of the work in pushing preservation of WebTV content further, but nowadays I mostly help around with smaller things in the background. I would be very interested in hearing more about the Rogers boxes and Rogers Interactive TV service. Particularly, I'd like to know what models of Motorola boxes were made that supported the Rogers WebTV software, as well as information on how WebTV was adapted for broadband. Right now, information on the Rogers WebTV service is next to impossible to find online, so getting more information about it would be excellent!

[@ShumanGore]

didn't motorola STBs ended being purchased by arris?

[@AaronBockelie]

@@411WebTV I remember that we had builds of WinCE running on the moto STBs. There was a generic intermediate layer that we could brand with html and styles that was loaded into the firmware packages. It's been 20 years though so I don't remember a lot.

[@NeonCoding]

Fun fact: about a third of android's OG developers came from WebTV in microsoft - there's a book about developing the system where they mention the three main places that all the devs came from.

[@arielchandia2]

😊

[@bankruptsee]

Life was so much better when the internet was being explored as a novelty rather than a part of our every day lives.

[@jess648]

and now that omnipresence is causing mental strain on younger generations

[@pepeshadilay]

Chat rooms and forums were a very social experience ... now it has turned highly anti social

[@UnknownName5050]

Thank you for putting this into words.

[@cheetahstrike2137]

@@jess648 this is so true, so so true. It more or less kills the mentality of younger people who aren’t as popular as the others. You get it rubbed in your face that you’re an outcast, everytime you open any social media or something else. Seeing other kids at school get, idk, 30-50 random unprompted messages a day, and the only one you’re getting is what’s to eat at home later this evening, it’s fucking depressing

[@emesito]

@@cheetahstrike2137 real

[@zzcolby27]

The fact that there's an OFFICIAL Dish Network port of DOOM for WebTV has blown my mind clean open.

[@zacharyreynolds4303]

OFFICIAL 😳

[@christophercompton2739]

The DishPlayer unit is the only one that actually had a link to games that I'm aware of. There is a secret code that reboots the entire unit into each game for most of the webTV Plus units. These tricks can be found with a general search in Google, I had even upgraded my dish player unit to a 120 gig IDE hard drive back in the day

[@DustoMan]

Man I really loved my DishPlayer.

[@411WebTV]

@@christophercompton2739 You would have had to download the games before being able to use the codes for WebTV Plus at the time those were published, which would have been a short time window as the games were removed from the internal servers they were discovered on not too long after the codes were released. While custom firmware does exist with all two officially released games (+ one unreleased port of MAME to WebTV) built in, and the files for all three WebTV Plus games are on the Internet Archive, they do not typically come buried within WebTV Plus hard drives. DishPlayer boxes were the only WebTV-based boxes that had any native support for games. ~ wtv-411

[@lemonheep]

This feels like the Wii before the Wii. The way it works reminds me EXACTLY of all those news, forecast, and online channels you'd mess around with. They even have a bop in the "Connecting to WebTV" screen.

[@theosguy4807]

Well the thing in common is that the service for the Wii "WiiConnect24" And "MSN TV service" ended at the same year. However there's more.

[@erroroliver]

@@theosguy4807 "However there's more." MICHEAL MJD??

[@Hijiri_MIRACHION]

Man, the Wii really was the last hurrah of these sorts of internet boxes, before everything became about streaming services... It even had a food channel, just like the Pizza button on the i-Opener.

[@erroroliver]

@@Hijiri_MIRACHION The 90's, the 00's were all good years

[@dsouth7754]

I can't think of a more boomer experience than WebTV attached to a gigantic rear projection television.

[@TDGalea]

Rear projection? Is that what we're calling CRTs now?

[@joeynebulous816]

@@TDGalea No, rear projection TVs actually have the guts of a projector smashed in the back of a TV cabinet. It was the easy way to get screen sizes larger than 28inch back in the late 90s to mid 2000s. It literally projects from the back to a translucent screen at the front.

[@TDGalea]

@@joeynebulous816 Consider me edumacated.

[@Journey_to_who_knows]

It’s a shame crts never survived long enough against lcds to be thin and less flickery, I miss the warm fuzz

[@BorbzYT]

No cap fr fr

[@matthewcassette]

This takes me back to 1999 when my friend and I would browse the web and go to random sites for hours. He got it taken away after we went to random chat rooms and made fun of NSYNC and Brittany Spears fanboys. Good times haha

[@phillyguy8541]

An interesting story with webtv. When I got mine as soon as they became available in the fall of '96, connectivity was quick and speedy. That Christmas it seemed that the whole world got webtv and there were severe connection issues. You had to open up a list of phone connection numbers and literally try each one until you found one that would work. You could go through a whole evening without being able to connect. Eventually they added more reliable numbers and stable connections.

[@JarHead3894]

christmas seems to have been big bucks time for webtv, i've seen quite a few boxes made in december they were also brand new, so i guess that gift didn't quite land

[@F40PH-2CAT]

Trying to connect on a Friday night was a nightmare. The struggle was real.

[@JarHead3894]

@@F40PH-2CAT they actually had quite an impressive system in place to try and help with that, but unfortunately it doesn't seek to have worked very well unfortunately, like a lot of the things webtv tried to do that was ahead of its time. it's called POPtimization, which is essentially where they'd take usage statistics and other variables and put them into the tellyscript (the thing the box downloads when it's "dialing toll free") so it can call different POPs at different times to help reduce load on just one

[@felsiccanis]

Ahh that creates such a nostalgic picture. Thanks for sharing!

[@Stabby666]

Fun fact, I was commisioned to write some web-based games to run on the WebTV. It was a weird thing to develop for due to the control system and restrictions on colours, and general speed and capabilities (very limited styling, and some elements that work in a weird way). The games (and a web chat I wrote) had a LOT of players though.

[@JarHead3894]

oh wow, do you still have any of the games? only webtv game i've found still online is tetris

[@KA-vs7nl]

Thats pretty cool hope you got paid well

[@MrThankman360]

I had a WebTV and I played games on mine. What was your games like?

[@Exodus_20_Deuteronomy_5]

My wife and I met in Talk city in 97. 25 years later still married.

[@wowierosieposie]

Twenty-six now? Also that's a sweet story :D

[@christianpatriot7196]

Oh wow, I remember those talk city chat rooms and how much fun they used to be and you would spend hours and those rooms and yes, many people including myself met a young lady and one of those rooms of course it didn’t work out but still need to meet someone in July 1998 over the email correspondence And then in person in November of that year and I remember searching seem to be less restrictive and more fun

[@chirpetstudios]

Hey Michael, I have an e-scanner to go with a WebTV system if you want one. I don't have the actual system anymore, but the scanner is in great shape.

[@MichaelMJD]

Thanks so much for the offer! My email is michael at teammjd dot com if you want to get in touch with me there and perhaps we can work something out.

[@mjdxp5688]

I've never used one of these before, but somehow it still gives me a real sense of nostalgia. The UI is simple yet really inviting and well made, I really like it.

[@Lanausse]

Hello again ._.

[@brodriguez11000]

The concept might have taken off if TVs were much better like current LCDs.

[@christopherwilliams9418]

@@Lanausse Hello NEWMAN 😩

[@YakkoWarnerTower]

I have the same feeling to be honest lol.

[@gabotron94]

The bleeps, whooshes and animations really tie it together

[@TravisStamper]

I used to work for Webtv in its infancy. That was nostalgic af. Thanks for the video

[@user-vi4xy1jw7e]

What are you up to nowadays?

[@tribaltroll]

What kind of work did you do? Any stories?

[@goatjail9364]

Wanna let you know my parents met on WebTV.

[@meandmyEV]

I'm so glad you made this video because there aren't that many videos about WebTV and it was a big part of my life in the late 90s and early 2000s. My parents had no experience with the internet or computers but they purchased one of these and understood how to use it because it was very simple and much more like other TV interfaces they had used like a cable box. My father was a Korean War vet and loved surfing and reading stories and articles about the war. I was newly married with a baby and we were pretty close to dirt poor with no computer so my parents bought us one of these as a wedding gift. It was really cool to be able to send them pictures of their new grandbaby etc. For the life of me, I can't remember how I got the photos onto the device. I think I might have scanned them in at a friend's house or photo store. In any case, my parents loved it and I was so happy to be able to send them pictures from another state so they could see their granddaughter grow up.

[@generallyunimportant]

rich delay

[@scott8919]

I believe these had the red, white and yellow cable inputs in the back. I remember hooking up my Playstation to the WebTV once and playing it via picture-in-picture.

[@big8news]

With the RCA cables you definitely been able to hook up out put from a camcorder, Play back video or pictures to send them

[@hrb2358]

WebTv had its own HYML markups that could only be seen by WebTv units. There were marquees, custom tables and lists.

[@muncherelli]

Bet it had some good Yavascript too.

[@mathiaschalup]

No.

[@cokeunity5652]

@@mathiaschalup what?

[@dizzym9554]

ahh yes, marquees, custom tables, and lists, which were... a standard part of HTML since basically the beginning... What's so WebTV specific about any of that?

[@therealdatenshi]

that "connecting..." screen and the boot up sequence in general has such a perfect 90s charm to it which is literally incredible

[@kenzieduckmoo]

one of the coolest things about web design back then was you could include snippets of code that regular browsers would ignore but webtv boxes would pick up, so you could do stuff like call out someone using a webtv :)

[@NoahClevinger]

Another hour long Michael MJD video. How awesome is that!

[@kahleelhavefunlearning]

it’s very awesome

[@jestahjava4255]

Xbox Live Insignia and now this?? Glad there are so many talented preservationists out there. I would have gone NUTS for this thing if we had one back in the day. Always loved internet connected things that weren’t just your standard computer.

[@UltraPoyoColt]

It’s so cool to see these being unboxed and set up in 2022! Webtv was cool, and even though I never used it, when there was Jeopardy episodes from the vault airing during the pandemic, a few of those were episodes that supported webtv. Glad I can use this to finally learn all it could do!

[@UltraPoyoColt]

AND IT CAN PLAY DOOM? (Alright I’m sold.

[@kayleigh1991]

An hour Michael MJD video? Sweet

[@Rebel9668]

Weird that the "Plus" model came with no keyboard. We had the standard model first and later the msntv2 version and they both came with the keyboard. They were both slower than molasses in Januray by today's standard as they were on dialup and it took forever to load a decent picture in an email, but having never had a pc before we thought they were pretty neat at the time.

[@davepatchen]

I worked on the marketing team at WebTV from just after launch through 2001 and helped launch and market many of these STB products and many versions of the service. It was a thoughtful and well-designed product for it's time. It had a limited market window since PCs got much less expensive and way easier to use during the time WebTV was most active. But in some ways it was ahead of its time--today my TV does a lot of of the innovative things that WebTV accomplished 25 years ago. The engineering team at WebTV was full of brilliant minds from Apple and General Magic and went on to found Danger, Android and all manner of other amazing technology firms. WebTV was a fun and wild ride at the beginning of an era.

[@JarHead3894]

i'm impressed they managed to get an MPEG decoder in a box with 2MB of RAM, 2MB of ROM, and a 112mhz CPU

[@TheKnizzine]

I for the life of me dont understand why smarttv makers wont include just a basic web browser. Like yeah smartphones and tablets are ubiqutious but it would be a really simple inclusion. I wouldnt mind a more stripped down textbased browser.

[@dejiko]

Hey Michael, looking forward for the Sega Dreamcast version of WebTV! Nice video as usual!

[@xxmichibxx]

I was wondering the same thing if this would work

[@azmifarhan1257]

It's the one that he teased at the end of the video

[@RetroGamerBB]

I've had 2 of them in my childhood both with wireless keyboards. Built websites and chatted on tripod, geocities, beseen, twocows, angelfire. They worked better on the net than the 486 PC we had at the time, except the lack of mouse support. Good times.

[@ChrissehCat]

I had the non-plus model with a keyboard. It was already kind of old when I was using it (Probably up into 2001) but man, I just threw the whole thing out about a year ago. :( This is so incredibly nostalgic, this is what I used as a teenager before I got a PC. Spent a lot of time using TalkCity chat 😅

[@scurvy3113]

We all did

[@TadanoHitohito]

Hopefully Jarhead includes a way to download TV listings for TV Home. It'd be pretty cool to hook one of these up to a digital TV conversion box and watch OTA TV that way.

[@JarHead3894]

we've taken a look at it before, there is some progress to where you can kinda sorta download premade listings, but we don't understand the file format enough to generate new ones

[@JarHead3894]

@@MrJ0mmy they're actually quite fast on half the speed, IRC and email don't require a lot of data to be sent

[@DGTelevsionNetwork]

@@JarHead3894 Are the listings in any way similar to zap2it mce listings? I remember msntv website used to have tv listings that used the exact same format as media center did and I wouldn't be surprised if the codebase was ported from the WebTV acquisition.

[@JarHead3894]

@@DGTelevsionNetwork i've not found any examples of MCE listings, but if they use .ptl then maybe

[@user-vi4xy1jw7e]

@@JarHead3894 I hope you can figure it out

[@SDRIFTERAbdlmounaim]

love the attention to what every text says and seeing how u blurred out their discord info in the terms of service screens shows dedication during video editing

[@lwvmobile]

I'm surprised that didn't come with the keyboard. My family bought the cheap thin WebTV unit and it had the keyboard with it. Now that I think about it though, I can't remember if it came packaged with the keyboard or not though, or if that was a bundle kind of thing where you bought both of them together. I still have the unit and the keyboard in the storage room somewhere, might have to pull it out and try to get that custom server going.

[@NorthStarBlue1]

The keyboard was always an add-on in the pre-MSNTV days I believe, my parents got a first-gen Sony WebTV (which was basically identical to the Phillips model aside from the logo on the front) and the keyboard was a $49.95 extra. I also seem to remember that there were a couple dedicated keys on the keyboard that accessed functions the remote couldn't, so in hindsight it was kind of a mandatory upsell if you wanted the full experience.

[@lwvmobile]

@@NorthStarBlue1 Yeah, I remember using the remote once or twice when the batteries in the keyboard were dead. Its pretty lousy. The keyboard has remote keys built in that are nice and clicky and also quite a few shortcut keys if I remember correctly.

[@greenaum]

Ah man, we used to chat on the newsgroups with a couple of WebTV users. They were generally looked down upon as worse than AOLers, but a few earned their respect. Apparently the thing couldn't scroll!? You were just stuck with whatever fit on the screen and no more! And it was something like 640x480. A miracle to even be able to use the web like that. Though I suppose we did, back in the day, with 28k modems and a more civilised 800x600 browser (this site recommends Netscape 2.0 with a resolution of blah blah blah). Lot simpler, lot less Javascript, and it still took 2 minutes to load a page. I liked the Internet 1.0 a lot better than the corporate-plagued idiot-heap it is now. Back then you at least needed the werewithal to buy or build a computer, install the Internet software on Windows 3.1, and actually get it all working! In 4MB of RAM! CPUs like 0.5% of the power we have now, with less than a thousandth of the RAM! My early computers didn't even have 8GB on the hard drive, never mind as RAM. So yeah. I propose a new Internet that only works on microwave ovens. The limited display and input means sites will be simpler. It could use the microwaves to communicate with a nearby transmitter tower! Just stay away from the antenna. And it will be so annoying to use, and with such little apparent reward, that only the true geeks will ever bother to use it. Home again!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Yeah, modern JS sites could easily hold a decent resolution digital video in all their hundreds of megabytes for One news article 🙄 Edit: judging by this video it could absolutely scroll down, but may not have been able to scroll sideways ?

[@greenaum]

@@kaitlyn__L Hm maybe it was the non-plus model that couldn't scroll? It's something I recall hearing (and being appalled at!) from users of the time. For $300, you could have built a decent enough PC at the time. You'd need to copy a Windows 3.1 setup, or borrow a Windows 95 install CD from work (cos paying retail would add a big chunk on to the price). But you'd be able to get something of decent enough spec, plus it would also play games. Maybe not top of the range but certainly good enough. Actually you'd probably have been able to just buy a PC ready-made, it's around the time that it stopped being worth it buying the parts to assemble yourself, companies sold finished units for the same price. At least the same price you'd pay buying components in single quantity, they made their profit in volume, of course. The WebTV offers "simplicity" as it's benefit, but I read that as "limited". I can imagine the limits and obstructions being annoying, where if you put in the little effort to learn to work a PC, you'd be much more free and able to do stuff, and ultimately more easily. In the end, the "appliance PC" ended up being the tablet, and from there evolved a keyboard just to make the tablet more functional and became the Chromebook. So the appliance PC evolved in the end, but not directly from the office PC, not by the route we thought it would. Then there's also those Android dongles you can plug into your PC but nobody seems to use those. Some people have smart TVs but don't really use those either. Beyond fixed functions like Netflix. Too much faff, not enough of one thing or the other, just a mess in-between. Same as this WebTV thing. Shows that people want things to be what they are, one thing or the other, not a halfway-neither. Turn off the computer and watch TV. Or else use the computer with the TV on in the background. People don't want to compute on the TV or watch TV on the computer. Talking of good ol' PCs, this heap of junk just deleted this entire post as I was typing it! I've had to start again from scratch! I pressed some wrong button apparently. Don't ask me, I only built the damn thing, only been using and programming the things for decades. My own silly fault for pressing a button, _obviously._

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@greenaum sure, if you care about maximum functionality you’re not in the target market. It’s kinda like the grandparents who only use an iPad today. What they need is a self contained appliance which can do Enough, and they’re willing to pay for the assurance it won’t be annoying to get going.

[@JohnOBryan]

I ended up with a $2000 phone bill after buying one of these because it was dialing a long distance number. I thought at the time paying for the WebTV service also covered the long distance charges. Nope!!!

[@NXSProductions]

WebTV was fantastic when it came out. I had my first experience during the summer of 1998 and loved all the chat rooms and the rudimentary (which at the time were revolutionary) websites. Pissed me off, though, that you never could get connected to any Geocities websites (at least I couldn't) and HTML coding on Geocities gave ordinary schlubs like me a chance to have their own personal corner of said web when the net was still the "wild west" of society. I miss those days. Thanks for the content!

[@singletona082]

We actually had this model webTV back when it was relevant. I have fond memories of it, and now want to buy one to gut to make a HTPC out of, complete with FLIRC reciever allowing me to use the original keyboard/remote combo. Because I thinkit would be neat.

[@kaitlyn__L]

A modern HTPC in this case would be pretty sweet.

[@skonks]

Seeing that loading city skyline brought me wayyyy back 😩

[@nebulae87]

There used to be a WebTV website for the movie ERASER where you could input your info or random info, and create a new identity as if you were entering the witness protection program. Thats about the only thing I remember about WebTV as my aunt was selling them in Albuquerque, NM back in what I believe might've been 97 or 98.

[@WatchingDude]

I remember reading newsgroups back in the day and having trouble with some posts. I eventually found out the troublesome posts were created by a woman who was using webtv and discovered that webtv did not follow the official internet protocols exactly so every time she posted to an newsgroup it would cause problems with my reader because it wasn't formatted properly.

[@NormanF62]

I got on the Internet in September 1997 with the original WebTV box. A trip down memory lane here. It would take so much to get it working again, so this is really a niche project. When Microsoft pulled the plug in 2013, it was the end of an era. The glory days of WebTV, sadly, are now in the past.

[@SheriCarthan-MinistryHelp]

I saw the sun come up many days while using this thing! Omg! Great times! The sound it made when you hit the return button! It initially had its own chat rooms, then it integrated with TalkCity. TalkCity despised us webtv users. 😂 I preferred the original chat rooms

[@KazyEXE]

Really surprised you haven't heard the "it goes to 11" bit, I've never seen the movie but I've heard of that part so many times, it's like a meme before memes were a thing!

[@SimonQuigley]

Yeah, how could you not know about "it goes to 11"?!

[@SmiIeyyXD]

Loving the way longer content from you, usually like to find videos to relax before going to bed and this is usually what I tend to look for, amazing content as always Micheal.

[@TheGodOfAllThatWas]

I can't remember if you went into it on the other video but webtv really got squeezed out. When Monitors themselves were like $200+ and getting a new internet ready computer was around $1k+ their pricing made sense. But fast forward to the late 90's when emacines were pretending to give computers away for free, and even if you paid for them they were in the 400 to 600 range, the webtv pricing didn't make sense. Disappointed (but not too surprised) printing isn't an option. Feels like YDKJ needs the keyboard. Strange that it's a 2 player engine typically on PC YDKJ is 3 player. Also the ads for acrophobia... I loved that game, those ads were not in the PC YDKJ.

[@SavvySage]

The webTV version of You Don't Know Jack is actually a port of You Don't Know Jack the netshow, which was one of five titles (along with Acrophobia) that was part of Berkeley Systems' online service, beZerk, from 1996 (the year of its inception) to 2001. The netshow is basically a scaled-down version of the original game, with only 15 questions (compared to 7 or 21 in the retail version), up to 2 player local multiplayer (increased to 3 in a future update), and the audio and animation were downgraded significantly. But the selling points for the netshow were 1. it was free 2. new questions were refreshed weekly 3. you could actually earn cash prizes if you did well on the leaderboard and 4. It had interstitial advertising, which was very innovative for the time, and taken for granted now in the modern streaming and mobile gaming era. Christian Thornton (@C WT) actually managed to get the PC version of the netshow working again (minus the ads) using assets from the webTV version found online. You should definitely check out his video on it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6DGiaqPqbRnb6s (P.S. I do plan on covering the netshow in its entirety in my Berkeley Systems documentary I'm working on. *wink*)

[@PhantomWorksStudios]

So in other words this made your tv smart to a certain degree and is kinda like a chrome book for Internet only and a recover/recorder all in one? With some *pc capabilities

[@tjentertainmentstudio]

This network connection setup is glorious was was absolutely a joy to watch you explain it.

[@FogHorn1911]

oh boy, I remember getting excited for this at a friends house and then spending half an hour typing out "Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time cheat codes" with the remote control.

[@DeaseNootz]

So excited for this video! We had one as a kid, and I recently bought the SAME model you unbox here, but since there's no use for them I have yet to hook it up. Glad to watch you do it lol

[@Turd_Ferguson538]

I will never forget getting caught watching porn on WebTV. 🤣🤣🤣

[@acupuncturekid]

This was my first internet experience ever. It was magical during my teenage years. Met so many girls offline.

[@JaredConnell]

You think you met girls lmao

[@RainyFoxUwU]

@@JaredConnell women do exist

[@RainyFoxUwU]

@@JaredConnell i mean i know they don't talk to you but

[@JaredConnell]

@@RainyFoxUwU im saying that nearly every one chatting online at that time claiming to be female was actually a dude

[@bryan45k]

No keyboard? Mine came with a wireless keyboard

[@RyanFeatherston]

My grandmother got WebTV around 1998 and she used it until the day she died in 2006.

[@AerianTelevision]

i'm amazed. this reminds me when i advertised my scratch projects back in 2020, one had the topic of webtv and now it just gets back to me in an 1 hour video i'm... honestly kinda surprised

[@thedariusone]

I wanted one of these so bad as a kid before my first PC in 98. I remember watching the infomercials and begging my dad.

[@christianpatriot7196]

Yes, and 98 is where the infomercials got me sucked in. These were times when I was suffering from insomnia could not sleep so I would stay up all night and catch these infomercials and of course I was drooling like a dog, wanting one of these and got one in July 1998.

[@Yubl10]

I see the viewer who sent in the Gex WebTV box is a Scott the woz fan. Michael obviously hasn't heard of Scott and so doesn't watch him and didn't get the joke/reference.

[@derekw6811]

The music is so perfect for this. I’d like to find a Spotify or Apple Music playlist with this vibe.

[@andresbravo2003]

Now this is Old School TV Internet before Android Smart TV Existed.

[@discocrisco]

I want copies of all of the sounds. Would love to navigate the modern web with all of the little chimes and click sounds from the old WebTV. I don't remember where I got our WebTV stuff, but it was cheap AF. It might have been Goodwill or the clearance section at Wal-Mart. Had a basic model and a keyboard. It wasn't my first experience with the internet, but it was the only way I could afford it at home.

[@nonsuch]

I always thought it looked cheesy and lame. But if that's all you had (or were able to get), I'm sure it was better than nothing.

[@marypaulinem6705]

Thank you for the memories. WebTv helped bring my parents ( now both gone ) to the internet. Bittersweet.

[@joshstephens413]

Oh criminy, here there be nostalgia. I remember getting Webtv when my dad signed up for Dish Network satellite service back in the late 90s. I remember spending so much time playing DOOM and You Don't Know Jack and new episodes of You Don't Know Jack would be added to the box periodically and it was so fun. I've always wondered which version of You Don't Know Jack was installed because I would love to play that version again. I haven't ever seen any version listed as being the version ported to Webtv.

[@zacharyweber1903]

Wow, I remember my uncle having this and being absolutely amazed when I was 10 years old.

[@NicolARark]

No way MJD rick rolled me 💀

[@tribaltroll]

I convinced my dad to buy this exact model in 1999 for $250. This was back when computers cost about $1000-$2000. Ironically, the web browser was the worst feature and had incompatibility issues with a lot of sites. But the cable TV features were mind blowing and worked great. My dad loved the TV guide feature and I used the VCR recording feature to record morning cartoons since I always slept in too late to catch them on air. Good times.

[@Bezi77777]

They should make ethernet and wifi version with modern web and html 5 support. They dont know how much do i love it.

[@brodriguez11000]

The console kind of fulfilled Microsoft's living room dreams.

[@stigrabbid589]

If you have a smart tv you can browse the web and run apps but it isn’t the same.

[@Bezi77777]

@@stigrabbid589 yes

[@AntarcticGuitarEnthusiast]

Excellent share. Great memories for me. I snagged a connection snippet and added a link to your awsum video! Thank you very much! Peace and Maximum Respect ~ Loo

[@kaitlyn__L]

Oh heck, that chat interface made me realise I’d totally forgotten that PMs were often called whispers back then 😅

[@RJWorrell]

Webtv was fun 😁 I posted in the forums/ Newsgroups often. Then a year later I bought a computer.

[@lilycowlishaw2952]

LOOK GARY THERE I AM glad i could contribute the gex tv box to archival and gaming

[@JarHead3894]

very nice austin powers ad came from it

[@lilycowlishaw2952]

@@JarHead3894 nice lmao

[@lilycowlishaw2952]

one thing i actually noticed about these boxes when i was sending over mine is the little indents on the top corners that seem to imply something was supposed to stack on top of these

[@MichaelMJD]

Thanks again for sending it!

[@JarHead3894]

@@lilycowlishaw2952 none of the other boxes have that, and nothing was ever made to stack on top of this one, so it's probably just a philips design moment. they actually discourage you from stacking things on it because they decided that their box that idles at 97F didn't need a fan

[@TheHatMan69]

WOOOO MY BOY JARHEAD MADE IT INTO AN MJD VIDEO!!! YEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHH BOI. I love seeing his WebTV updates over in the Zune community discord.

[@JarHead3894]

zune checkers crossplay when

[@TheHatMan69]

@@JarHead3894 Make it today >:)

[@sbrazenor2]

I just connected my PC to my TV, and then I guess I had WebTV? 🤣 I'm sure it's a lot more powerful than this thing.

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

To think my online experience started off as a simple bid to try and get a report done for my arts and humanities class and used a flipping WebTV for research and got my humble beginnings. And now it became much more

[@Krzrrazrrokr]

I remember doing research for a school project using my Motorola razr flip phone’s mobile browser. It served its purpose at the time. I found out what I needed.

[@Waffles2402]

so i copy u website u made and i browsed it up and its works home show on my phone

[@Jurtaani]

This is fascinating stuff even though i never used these Web tv style boxes myself. Closest stuff that i saw was some of those early 2000's Digibox internet things, that would on top of providing DVB-T/C to old analog tv's. they also had some simplistic internet browser, with mainly content like enhanced Teletext content. with the lure being that it would allow the content be looking like it would on computer with images and all. i don't remember if it had email or if the internet was only for those simple websites, nor do i remember the make or model of the thing. i only saw that thing sometimes while we visited at my mom's friend. kinda wild how we nowadays have similar features build in to our tv's or available as separate android tv/apple tv boxes. truly a device ahead of it's time.

[@skylerb2218]

I mean when you really think about it, this was a device ahead of its time. Now you've got gaming consoles, TVs themselves doing what this product already imagined a long time ago.

[@nchw68]

I had a Sony model in the 90's that did not have a printer parallel port built in. I bought the printer adapter for it that directly connected to the right side of the box (expansion port, no cable) which made the unit larger overall. I bought a printer and signed up for 1 month of service on GUBA (Gigantic Usenet Binary Archive) and printed out a lot of naked ladies, ha ha. I also printed out a lot of stereograms on fancier print paper for photos. I still have all the stereograms prints. I spent too much money on printing with the ink and paper. I remember that people would just get a busy signal if they called me while I was online. That was a plus for me if it was my work trying to call me in after hours, lol.

[@SenseMakesNone]

I remember seeing a TV/VCR combo in my local cash & carry here in the UK when I was a kid, and I was never allowed to buy one lol Also, 22:05 really shows KZbin compression at it's finest.

[@ADreamingTraveler]

Was really looking forward to this. This thing seemed like it was way ahead of its time

[@xan1242]

Now you got me curious, what does the MIDI synth sound like on this guy

[@BeerMeTV]

My parents had one of these when I was a kid. It was my first exposure to the internet. I remember having a digital pen pal, spending lots of time on geocities, and listening to South Park sound bites. Good times.

[@DominicGo]

the ui/ux is so good - i love the look of the menus, and wizard/setup screens (the skeuomorphic keyboard looks so good too)

[@gl5301]

Had to check if the amazing halloween website is still live - IT IS 😀

[@ElricSowrd]

It has it's own Version of Never Gonna Give You Up? LOL 😆

[@RRGreiner]

Firing up the webtv and going to Talkcity, Mystic Shadows Inn while listening to the built in classical music (moonlight sonata in particular) is a POWERFULL memory of my late teens. Such a fun experience

[@prozacgodretro]

First person to get a full pacifist speed run on webtv doom with the remote control will win all the internet points.

[@Spacebeagle]

Thanks for the WebTV & MSNTV2 videos. It was nice to go back in time. I wondered at times what happened to some of the people I knew or knew of on WebTV especially the moderated WebTV official tech news group. Paul Erickson was the king there and I remember Matt Man although Matt I donlt think I corresponded with. Paul made the rocket ship background for me. WebTV was a part of my life and I was sorry to see the service close. I think I still have some units. Thanks for the updates. ⌨

[@RayHill]

Years later, I found out that "EricPaul" / Paul Erickson was the manager at the cafe I went to ever Monday night during the years that I worked at WebTV. Genuinely wonderful human being. He gave SO much value to WebTV users without every being paid a penny by WebTV. And made a mean mocha.

[@kernelpanic9373]

I remember trying one of the WebTV demo units in Montgomery Ward as a kid and being impressed it could play Real Media Audio files (I don't remember it having controls though). This was before Microsoft bought them; could the later models do mp3 and video?

[@JarHead3894]

the original can do MP3 although not very well, MSN TV 2 is made to be a media player, and can do both audio and video

[@AndrewMackoul]

You should check out AOL TV next! My grandpa had one.

[@steveninman2706]

i remember having one back in the day, we were the first family that had one and my dad would get emails for work on it. kfc paid for all the service and I swear It even had a keyboard for it. i always wished it did more on it but it was the first time having internet at our home and all the kids at school thought it was cool.

[@Radi0he4d1]

Smart TV of its day 👌

[@beekats]

i have my gcse mocks tomorrow, hoping this video will bless me with high grades. but seriously, looking forward to a super long michael mjd video!

[@IAmNotAFunguy]

Don't forget if you have an antenna in this day and age, you'll need a digital tuner box to watch Live TV on the WebTV box because all TV broadcasts over-the-air are digital only. You should STILL be able to code the remote and IR blasters for one of those as a "cable box".

[@JarHead3894]

webtv? never heard of it

[@BurnedNoodle]

bebtv

[@ronniepirtlejr2606]

I remember using that in the late '90s it was ridiculous! All the chat rooms. Lol

[@RetroGamerOG_]

My dad used this service used this service and he still remembers it and he loves it even the storage

[@cydragon2.099]

I remember reading some old published thing in college were it was being speculated of Internet connected TVs to be a thing

[@phillyguy8541]

I had both versions and even added the optional keyboard and a printer. On the original version you had to sent for a special box to connect to the webtv box into which the printer was plugged. I could not afford a computer. WebTv did everything I wanted at the time and many features were easier to use than similar ones on a PC. Eventually I had to break down and buy a PC which cost me 1200.00 compared with the 300.00 for the WebTV.

[@NobleFurLyfe]

i really love all of the sound effects the UI had, wish i could download 'em

[@KemmerlingKomputers]

man had what i thought was a top of line unit back in the day, a sony unit with all kinds of accessories and stuff but never could talk my mom into the service, i got it for free, but i always dreamed of using it, later on in my life i was an earlier adopter of some android tv boxes, so i guess i got what i wanted but it seemed so advanced back in the day

[@LNSLateNightSaturday]

20:37 I love that the random thumbnail for Sesame Street seems to be from the episode where Dennis Franz guested. That's a deep cut! lol