The WEBTV (MSNTV) Experience
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- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2024
- I had a WEBTV since the late 90's. The name changed to MSNTV when Microsoft bought it, but, it is always WEBTV to me. Microsoft is closing it down on September 30, 2013.
Nostalgia for WEBTVers and for the curious who may have heard of it here is a 12 minute tour into Dial-up internet as seen on your home TV set.
See also: en.wikipedia.or...
![Getting started with WebTV [1998]](/img/1.gif)
I miss those days! Chatrooms, streaming radio stations in low-bandwidth, waking up to see the red glowing mail indicator, and being so young and invincible lol. Geez how time flies! RIP WebTV!
^^^^ THIS!!!! ONLY THING I LIKED ABOUT WEBTV was the INTRO MUSIC!!!
hudsonvalleyguy1 WEBTV ROM GIFS (the embeddable and unfagged version)
long intro music
AND WITH TODAYS INTERNET, U CAN LISTEN TO ""INTERNET STREAMING RADIO STATIONS""...
+tyrenebanks72 I miss it too. It was so fun. The internet was going to be this great tech thing. Today it so full of crap. I long for those early days. Webtv was so cool.
R.I.P. WEBTV!!! I HAD ONE OF THEM GRAY BOXES... I MISS THE MAIL CHIRP
WebTV was my first exposure to the Internet back in 2000, and life hasn't been the same since, for better or for worse. My Mom loved WebTV, easy to use.
Saddened to learn WebTV is no more; was my first internet experience from 1999 until buying a PC in 2003. Lots of good memories.
Same here..... So many, many memories... What I would do just to go back in time and say hi to all my friends on Talk City... I yurn for it....
Bryan
Same time frame for me, Perry. Got an iMac G4 in '03 but still had dial-up for a couple of years. It was like driving a car with a Lamborghini body
and a Model T engine.
Oh yes the good old safe days. TalkCity, GeoCities, Angelfire, Tripod, draacs123 gifs, VBIRC, and all the .ram files you could get to work. I would gladly go back to those days in a minute. So simple so innocent and so much fun. I would love to retro my Windows10 theme to look like this again and use the same startup screen
I just became 15 again. Its crazy what emotions and memories watching this brings back
I just became 4 again ^^
WebTv was where I was a cringy 5th grader looking up Dragon Ball Z stuff and Sailor Moon, talking on the chat rooms with people I didn't know, and reading old school Snopes. I used to email my grandma, my uncle, and aunt, and just had fun in general. Those were the days. But man do I cringe or what
remember when chat rooms were normal??? i met some one i still talk too who i met in a chat room 16 years ago
@@danielcoy4938 hahaha they were though
Didn't know WebTV lasted THIS long!
2013. yep.
Kerry White in the dreamcast version it used the same music and interface but also used original songs.
My first internet was the Sega Saturn NetLink followed by WebTV. Such memories. I loved the wireless keyboard. I had a 50" rear projection TV I surfed the web with. Also, I loved the chatrooms and met a few people IRL from WebTV chatrooms. This brings back such memories. I got my first computer to play Half Life on, but I didn't use it for internet surfing much because I preferred my WebTV on the huge (for the time) TV.
I miss the comfort of the laptop keyboard typing onto the TV in large clear green font on black background. It was very cozy.
Great video, it brought back lots of memories of my MSN TV unit, I bought it in 1999 for $100, it was a store display model. I only used it for about three years before oI bought a computer. Lots of good memories of that thing.
Nostalgia bomb to the max. I got one of these after I got tired of surfing the net on my Dreamcast. Phenomenal service.
This is how I first got online. Remember Talk City? I used to have a ball on it. Sure don't miss dial up though!
wowwww.talk cityyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
The greatest moment of my life was finally bringing the internet in my home in 1998, via WebTV! Four years and finally purchased a computer in 02, but still kept WebTV up and running for a couple of years because I couldn't bear to part with it! Steve Perlman let his brainchild die a slow and painful death. He was a total sell out. This should have been the first smart/streaming device. MSN purchased WebTV with the sole intention of destroying it.
I loved my WebTV. It was my first experience using the Internet. I was a poor, starving, just finished college but without a job student at the time. I'd tear my hair out now though if I had to go back to dial up speed. Thank God for broadband! I've made my computer into a supped up "WebTV". I hooked it up to my 50 inch LED TV, and I use a wireless keyboard. I can lay in bed and surf all day long now. :)
8-)
I remember the ads for it in the 90's. Old people complaining computers are hard to use.
Oh gosh! I remember this thing! WebTV was the first time I used the internet, I think.
it even had a Dreamcast version in japan.
I miss this! I had the original webtv in 1997 and I begged my parents for it. They wouldn't buy me a computer as it was too expensive. After about a year or two, I learned enough about computers and used the webtv to purchase a refurbished desktop. I had it sent COD so my parents got suckered into buying it. Lol. I wasn't on webtv by the time MS bought it out but it will forever be a sweet memory of using webtv in the good ole days.
webtv was a lot faster back in 2000 when I used it, even with the dial up. But soon it started to fall behind a few years later. I then got msntv2 in 2008. I really miss all the fun I had back then before everything went all high tech.
"before everything went all high tech" Really? Computers and the Internet were "high tech" long, long before WebTV/MSN. What they did is sell you an underpowered PC/STB with a single purpose. I never saw much value (for myself) in what they provided. But they were well received by a large enough segment of the population to hang on for an impressive amount of time. Even AOL died before Web/MSNTV and that's where I cut my teeth in 1991.
This was my only access to the internet when I was a kid. I had many great times using it. Thanks for posting. So nostalgic.
I am shocked that the interface did not change much from the late 1990's when I had it.
Bro! Back in the day when shit wasn’t so complicated and you could just talk. Shit was slower that fuck but I enjoyed myself
We had the first generation WebTV and I can't find any first generation WebTV sounds or music ANYWHERE!! This is still nostalgic as it was very similar.
Loved that post about the debate between the library or a laptop. I wonder if that person had moved on to a smartphone yet.
Man, memories. I was stuck with the original webtv from 2003 to 2008, when my original unit broke, and I switched to MSNTV 2. I used that for like 11 months before getting my first "real" PC; an Acer Aspire 4330 in early 2010. I got my current desktop 2 1/2 years later, and it's amazing to look back at how little I got by on.
Thanks for posting, brings back great memories of the early days of the internet on my WebTV Plus!
Yikes! I remember having this thing from 1998 until getting a "real" PC in 2000. The Web TV Classic I had was 200 bucks and on sale back in August of '98. RIP WEBTV/MSNTV
I had WebTV before MSNTV, so seeing this is weird. I did end up getting my mother the nicer MSNTV when I moved out of my home (@19) and got a good-enough paying job. After years of paying those ridiculous fees...
We had the AOL version of Web tv lol.
the user interface is still light years ahead of what smart TVs and streaming boxes today offer.
I miss the old MSN layouts
@@solitonmedic
So do I.
I remember when the only actual music you could listen to was Real Audio sites. And sometimes they wouldn't work. But oh the memories. Hated the annoying green loading bar though lol
Today we can use it and it's not that big of a deal, but it would have been exciting to see the internet on a tv during the first years of the service (when it was a new experience). Thanks for posting the video.
Christmas 1998, when it was still called WebTV. Thanks 🎅🏽
A lot of memories! Thanks for uploading!
I bought a webTv unit back in 1996. It was my first home experience with the internet. By the late 90's I had a $2,000 Gateway pc with 64mb of RAM and a 4GB hard drive.
Oh man... that brought back such sweet memories. I love those sounds. Thank you!!
Wow. Thank you for this. I always wanted to see how WEB TV worked. I always used desktops and my game consoles for everything but was very intrigued by this concept.
I loved my webtv! Good memories ❤️
WOW
Bringing back the feels :(
Bless you, Thomas Dolby. I love you goodbye.
man i loved web tv talk city chatroom personal email pages it was great
Agreed,
I miss Star Trek Captains Table so much... People from all over the world could gather there. Must have been hundreds of us. I always wondered were they all went.. Haven't heard from them in years...
Bryan
Webtv never forget!
i miss the old web tv. Wish i could get back those poems i posted back then in the all poetry rooms. Miss my friends back then as well on it, and the hypnotic music as it came on.lol Most of all i miss being 20 years younger back then.lol It was exciting to watch it come on.lol majical
I had one from 98-00, I had no idea this was still around by 2013, so weird
WebTv was awesome.
Just cause you don't know HTML code is on you!! Chat based role play and role play began in these chatrooms in talk city!!!
i had experienced the worldwide web at other people's houses on other people's computers but WebTV was my first in my own home - and I LOVED IT! (And I MISS it!)
im pissed all these years later I learn that I could have changed the midi tunes that played instead of the classic music that was always on.
I have a ipad and just got a beautiful new red 17 inch hp laptop but you know what ..I still miss my web tv ..i have held on to it just in case..Linda
Just get an TiVo it's the same thing.
It says it's shutting down on September 30, 2013, yet the GUI looks like it hasn't been updated in a decade.
Maybe not even that. This was for your CRT TV set...to be watched from 8 to10 ft away.
I had WEBTV back in 1997,even bought the printer adapter and an hp printer for it. But when I wanted a computer I foolishly chose windows instead of Mac and boy have I been sorry for it these last twelve years. But I liked WEBTV even bought the wireless keyboard,loved the irc chat talkcity
I'm with you on this! I NEVER called it MSNTV ( lame ). It was always WebTV to me. And when I would tell people I had WebTV they would reply "Where can I get one?" And that was in recent years, I might add!
Hello Allison and Pa I miss you. I think I got web TV in 1994 I thought it was a great fantastic entertaining device.
web tv was great back then i didn't have an computer too much but an web tv and was able to go online
From what I Can remember Is That Got mine In 99, I really do miss such a Great device even If It was slow dial up It was still Great.
Ah, the WebTV "interactive program" thing on Columbia-TriStar shows (mainly Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!)...
I got my WebTV in the middle of Titanic mania. There were a couple Titanic discussion groups I got caught up in.
I used to rock WebTV. It a funny as folks used to hate on WebTV users (as being non-technical), yet I was working in computer software, helping to develop extensible markup languages, command line switch-programs, etc. during those days. I used it simply because I have poor eyesight and liked to see things on a larger screen. I was a "real one" who simply "did the internet thing" as a hobby unlike all those haters back in the day. This showed me the shear number of frauds on the Internet. Go people.
WebTV: for so.many of us, the first portal into that wonderful world of porn.....ahhhh. Memories.
blagoyavich rod don't forget about watching the scrambled playboy channel if you had cable. lol.
Yes it was. Johnny Rotten and Stileproject
Netgroups ftw
Your connection was FAST compared to mine, which was during 1997-2001(I think) it took 6 minutes to connect. This was between 9pm and 1am. Chat rooms were addictive!. Sadly enough, Your WebTV connection is faster than my new phone...Well, every time I go to a different page. But still...lol. If I remember right...you can't "crash" WebTV...can you? I constantly crash what I'm using, Computer, phone internet...anything with 4 wheels lol.
Absolutely archaic; but there was a charm to the laptop keyboard and large email on your TV. Fantastic community in some of the forums.
I can remember so many of those incredibly awesome & helpful people.
I miss my WebTV every thing was easy to navigate
i miss you so much♥
Back in the day before switching to the PC.
I remember WebTV originally using the AltaVista search engine.
I remember that and now you have this ppl complaining about slow internet now, imagine that?
I have wonderful memories of it back then and how simple it was to navigate, and that at any point you could just turn it off
And it was WebTv before Microsoft bought them out..that's for real
I wish Windows10 had a hidden feature that let you change the look to mimic WebTv homepage.
This is what web-surfing on TV looked like before "smart TV"-type devices like Android boxes perfected the whole thing. It's also a heck of a lot cheaper.
I had forgotten about the city that never gets closer, and the infuriating green yarn.
I still have two we TV boxes. I wanna hook them up just to see what happens
Memories.. :)
I still have the box but not the keyboard I was a kid when my tech savvy uncle brought to my house because I was into computers it was ahead of its time and the pioneer of all these new web tv devices out not
Seems like Microsoft screws up everything they get their hands on. Why couldn't they have left well enough alone? It started going down hill when they changed web-tv to msn-tv now even that is dead, what about the thousands of subscribers? I still have my web-tv equipment from 1998 I'll never get rid of it.
Basically, that's what Microsoft does now-a-days.
Not only to WebTV, but to video game studios as well (Like Rare and Mojang).
Microsoft is really suspicious now after certain non-Americans took it over.
If I recall correctly, the music was in stereo... any way of getting "Cozy " in stereo?
I did not have stereo. You will have to search. Someone has a video of the music somewhere on here.
@kerrywhite thanks for uploading this...
I honed my trolling chops on webtv
I was one of the first people on WebTV. I am not proud of my contributions to webtv users. I was co-author of the email and voting bomb. I was also a troll. I had Robin of Lox's alt.discuss Groups Page, temporarily removed, because some of the groups titles had the word,sex, in them, which caused an article about trolls in the webtv new's online Net4tv.com.
Ah BeeDiana she gave me First Prize in a Halloween Sig Contest in the group that broke off from aph. She has a memorial website now. Minimoo has passed away :
What is aph? Who is BeeDiana?
aph was the 1st "alt.discuss" ng & was made for the new pagebuilder. Original webtv didn't have pagebuilder, got added later. In 99 I think. alt.pagebuilder.help. BeeDiana is a great gal, & her nic appeared when you were showing ngs looked. One was when you were showing "users".
Here's the award she gave me:
www.wtv-zone.com/mechtild/hh/award.gif
Here's the memorial page.members.boardhost.com/MEMORIALS/index.html Also there's a group of webbers on facebook. btw, if you knew Optimod, she just passed away.
memory lane in the beginning
takes me back to the good ol days :-) learning html for email sigs was a blast..of course you had to have tripod of geocities to host your gifs or jpgs..its sad webtv browser was always subpar :-( as far as basic internet needs this was for you..rip webtv
lmao my parents met on webtv
i remember making my own email signatures, audioscopes,i wonder if you can still do them? anyone know? my internet provider quit carring for the plugin for webtv,i some dudes going to chatroom to chatroom trying to get nude pics,i got nude pics without asking,cuz i was a nice guy
Interesting concept, did it not have support for a mouse? 6:38 can you get youtube on a netbook, lolz.
+J Barker Keyboard only. As much as 8 to 11 seconds of a mpeg after eons of waiting. Low end of dial-up.
I miss webtv, it was the bee's knees
Wow Webtv, always wanted that but didn't think it was worth the money( even tho I didn't get my first computer until 2001), this is actually my first time ever seeing it in action, lol...
The Nintendo Entertainment System was 30?
I could have been told it turned 30 today and I'd feel old. I feel really old now.
I'm sure that even though the service closed down, I'm sure you're still able to use your webtv.net email address as a normal Microsoft account, right?
+Kevin Bhasi No. The webtv addresses do not exist any longer. They shut everything down, with an email the week before detailing and answering a FAQ.
viewerxreally I wonder if users could convert them to live.com email addresses then...
1913 ... D'uhoh!! Too late now.. wait..100 years too early, yeah that's the ticket ... too early!!
Tech this old and nostalgic makes you think like a Windows 95 computer, Eh? (Not trying to sound mean)
I remember when one of my uncle's had WebTv in the past cause he would use it sometimes. ☺ but not anymore!
Kids these days don't understand THE STRUGGLE.
i so miss webtv lol
webtv sucked !!!
***** Fred Schall Jr
(Please click "Read More")
WebTV was a VERY vulnerable thing... There was so many exploits discovered for it that they had to forcefully disable your account and your box if you attempted to hack. They might even throw you to jail if you managed to do something malicious to everybody's units! I might not have experienced an actual WebTV unit (Well, I was way too young in the 90s) or even a MSNTV unit, but I learned a lot of it's fanbase recently.
***** Did you read it completely, sir?
TheJackFrom4170 It sucked because you could not hack it. Meh!
Kerry White They DID hack MSNTVs before to make them run Linux. But still, nobody's supposed to hack WebTVs which is a letdown to many hobbyists...
Did you get any emails during this video? I've been trying to find the WebTV "beep beep" email notification sound for years
I do not have a memory of that happening during the making of this. Sorry.
For starters, interesting little piece of kit this was.
Secondly, your weather said Topeka. Are we talking the Topeka that I know (and hate) that is the capital of Kansas, or the two knock-offs?
Brownbackistan, it is.
Then hello from the North side of Top Shitty (specifically Seaman)!
Use to be on TalkCity looking for chicks to talk to
Kerry, what are you doing to me?
8-)
God damnit! why the fuck couldn't I get to enjoy shit like this, I hate being young.
Anyone have the email "chirp"? I'd love to have that as an email notification. I found another WebTV video that has it, but it goes off during the splash screen sound. Would really like it isolated.
i want wetv back
11:52 "September 30, 1913" Did you let your old windows 95 computer type in the year again?
Did you bother to read earlier comments? Fuck! Make one mistake and people come out of the woodwork years later.
did you turn off the music??? THAT WAS THE COOL PART!! WTF!?
Because I did this while others concentrated on the music. Find one of them and be happy.
thank you for this!