Re: Chew on this.

Hmm, after reading this thread I was surprised the majority of the replies
was in opposition with the WebTV idea, flaming it or, in the best case,
thinking of it as an intermediate state to a fully integrated system or to a
digital TV.

Some of my ideas:

1) the first PCs (8080 or 8086) were "computers with disabilities" at the
moment. But their market boomed.

2) the WebTV + today's TV channels + today's Internet worth almost nothing.
But the WebTV + tomorrow's TV channels and sites, especially designed for
WebTV? There wasn't very much to see at a color TV set when almost every TV
channel was B/W ...

3) Let's say you are a finance expert or a sort of broker. You have your
computer and you use it intensively with Excel and databases. But you really
need permanent information about stocks, market price and so on. You cannot
use the computer to surf the net. Here comes the WebTV: a special channel,
with the market information  using the bandwidth of the TV channel and with
links to pages with detailed information. The main stream of information is
changing very fast, is just a "browsing guide" ... And you really don't need
(and cannot use) a computer for this.

4) Sometimes I get sick of searching on the net hours. Sometimes I feel the
need of a "guided" search.

5) I don't think it will be ever a DTV other than a WebTV descendant. This
(WebTV) is a technology based on standards (hmm, almost) and probably this
will be future developed to DTV or some integrated device (telephone + TV +
net).

6) There are a lot of brilliant people and they will have a lot of ideas on
how to use this device to get money. And others will find out how to improve
the WebTV ...

7) in the worst case (I don't believe it) WebTV will become just an improved
version of teletext. :-)

Regards,
Mike

HWG hwg-theory mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA