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Microsoft Says Goodbye To WebTV/MSN TV
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has just notified both subscribers of MSN TV that the service would be ending at the end of September (FAQ for subscribers here). The service, which delivered Internet access to a TV screen via a set top box, was the evolution of WebTV Networks launched by Steve Perlman and others during the initial Web boom in the mid '90s. Microsoft bought the company for $503 million in 1997, when Bill Gates was still CEO."
I owned MSN TV and it was one of the best services of all time. So long, you will be missed...
The company that develops your product might decide to drop its support and you're screwed.
Of course, WebTV is direct competition to XBox One media center, they really don't want to support the old one anymore.
There were only 2 subscribers. Good that it stops, now.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
...the umpteenth set-top box business model that collapses. Siemens is trying, at this moment, in Central Europe. Why do companies try this business model so often, where it has shown only one consistency, namely that of failure everywhere ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Last time I looked, the hints were that Xbox1 would do the same thing as MSN TV.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
WebTV was my first introduction to the internet. We were too poor to afford both a new computer and an internet connection. I learned that using only a keyboard in a GUI is unpleasant. I learned that dial-up really is objectively slow. I learned that internet chatrooms are a place for desperate people to reach each other either for sex or for trolling purposes. I learned that internet porn is really something special. I learned that lesson a lot.
I also learned that spilling a beverage on a keyboard does in fact break it. So thats one experiment you don't need to try at home.
Assume Amazon, Netflix, etc., etc., go out of business, I can still use Plex or Playon to stream movies off my own LAN.
The really bad thing that would happen is the death of DVDs. DVDs were the single greatest thing to ever happen to the "public domain," copyright be damned.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Two words; hot grits.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You'd think they'd offer an upgrade path to Xbox One. But no. That's not the Microsoft way. They didn't migrate PlaysForSure to Zune. They sort of migrated Zune to Windows Phone and Xbox Music. They're not good at gracefully supporting their content buyers as the technology changes.
Microsoft never understood. WebTV was never a replacement for a PC. It was never for the technically literate. It did work wonderfully for older folk or those who want email contact with family and friends and do not want to think about updates, BSOD, and other computer system turds. The user interface could be explained to older folk quickly, there were few surprises. You did not need a deep mental model of how it worked. Unlike smart phones it had a real keyboard that worked for folks with slightly impaired motor skills. It did not need a computer geek in the house to keep it running.
Its main problem was that MS abandoned it and let the software rot. There were increasingly amounts of web content that the WebTV box could not display.
Unfortunately, there is not really a good solution today. The tablets all have quirks that require deeper knowledge. PCs accessing GMail are the pits -- and Google keeps changing the UI (try explaining to an 85 year old why things are different).
Two words; hot grits.
You mean Natalie Portman is responsible? Did she hump him to death or what?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I always wanted a MSN TV 2 box and now I'll finally be able to afford one!
The original idea of WebTV was that it would be a simple web browsing appliance for people who didn't need all the power of a full-fledged computer, and didn't want to learn all the intricacies of Windows. The thing is, we now have other devices that do this even better: tablets and smartphones. And the non-technical crowd has transitioned to these devices en masse. We hear a lot about the so-called "post-PC era", but it isn't because experienced users have stopped using standard PCs. (They haven't, and won't – tablets and smartphones are much too limited to take the place of a real workstation.) Rather, it's because people who never used all the power of a PC in the first place decided to switch to devices that were easier to use, and didn't require antivirus software or weekly security patching. An iPad makes a lousy workstation, but for non-technical users, it's a better web-browsing/email/Facebook device than a Windows PC. And WebTV with its ancient hardware and firmware couldn't keep up.
I said good bye to Microsoft, like some 10 years back.
was the service realy that ill used? Just two subscribers?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
....and that's saying something.
The inability of MS's teams to work together might have something to do with the atrocious stack ranking method they used for employee evaluation:
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
That's from Vanity Faire from last year. I still find it hard to believe. I used to think Balmer hate was just sort of nerd posturing, but after reading that I realized, no, Balmer really is a clueless jack off doing nothing more than reciting the latest MBA buzzwords he learned from the latest business bestseller.
Now how am I supposed to browse Geocities?
How is it this half billion dollars is well spent ? Only if the "downside" possibility is worth the money spent. So I wonder how it is that Microsoft and HP and Google and Facebook remain profitable with all of the money they toss around on dead ends. After a while it all looks like good old fashioned money laundering, masquerading as investment....
My first job was tech support for MSN TV... That was in 2003. I'm not sure development was really the issue, especially with the type of money that the XBOX is bringing in compared to MSN TV.
So where do I send the computer illiterates that can't handle a PC?
"Microsoft has just notified both subscribers of MSN TV that the service would be ending..."
Yes, and I imagine the two of them are equally disappointed. (I'm sure someone already made that joke, but I couldn't resist...)
Seriously though, I was responsible for some of the (frankly torturous) menu music in the earlier WebTV firmware (ooh, .MOD files...) which I was never actually paid for because my cheque got lost in the shuffle when Microsoft bought WebTV Networks. I think I'm happier to be able to say that Microsoft stiffed me though (and more proud of that fact than the music I wrote), rather than if I'd actually been paid. It makes for a better story.
Surprised the platform has survived this long though...
It would be cool of MSFT to at least issue a firmware update that would let users choose their own homepage, and bypass the paid service, which is going away, of course; at least with the MSNTV2, it's a 733MHz Celeron, which should be able to handle rendering of most mobile sites, at least... there are lots of people who will be utterly lost without this service (my brother being one of them). I just bought one of the Google TV units to see if it will be a suitable replacement.