RCA/MSN TV 2 Internet and Media Player

My mother got one of these for Christmas. We set it up in our house first and tested it a couple days before giving it to her since she had previously tried a couple of PCs with very poor results (not the PC's fault). We went through every single option available except for hooking up a memory card reader and everything worked great. The account setup was almost instant, the email works fine and the web browsing is fine (although I prefer a higher resolution myself). It's actually not bad on her fairly new Sony TV. Neither she nor we previously used WebTV, but I like the functionality of this unit and it does everything she wanted and more (music & videos). With the $100 rebate, the price is super-affordable and this is a near-perfect option for people who are justifiably afraid of a PC (malware, etc) or just can't learn how to use one (my mother). We already have broadband and her apartment has access to our network, so we purchased the $100 annual account for her. For less than $100 in hardware and less than $9/mo, she can keep in touch with lots of family members and browse the web for news, weather and medical information. We hope the service and hardware are reliable, but the first week's experience has been nothing but positive.

Update 4/29/2008 - My mother switched to DSL about a year ago and the box works much better on broadband DSL. Also the AOL email problem seems to have been resolved.

Original Review:

The negative reviews are misleading. I got this for my mother and was worried about the negative reviews. The box is great. Mom is on dial-up and she could not be more pleased. She is using this instead of a PC. Now she does not have to be worried about viruses and keeping AV software updated and keeping spy ware off her PC.

There is a problem I hope will be resolved soon, some AOL people cannot receive email from my mother, but she was able to sign up for a free yahoo mail account to email those friends until AOL and MSN can work out their differences.

I'll start off by saying,yes, I am a WebTV veteran. I have owned and operated a Plus unit for the last 7 years or so. That said, I'll jump right into the supposed CONS of this unit:

1. Pagebuilder/Scrapbook is history. Get over it. Pagebuilder sucked big time. I never used it except as a quick and dirty way to give scrapbook images a temporary web address so I could transload them to a REAL website, like Geocities, which worked just fine with my old Plus and is even easier to use on my new MSN TV2. The new unit is capable of using USB flash drives or card readers - we're talking hundreds of megabytes worth of photos at your fingertips vs the measly 2-12MB you used to get from Pagebuilder/Scrapbook. Plus, if someone e-mails you a photo, you can actually attach that photo to another e-mail you send or upload it to your own website or group. (I use Geocities and Yahoo! Groups all the time).

2. No more screencaps, picture in picture, or TV listings. Boo Hoo. The screencaps were lousy, anyone who actually wants picture in picture probably already has that option built into their TV and there are sooooo many websites where you can get "personalized" tv listings that are faster and more reliable than my old Plus unit's listings which half the time didn't automatically update anyway. I suppose, if you ONLY have a MSN TV2 unit and no computer or digital camera, losing the grainy screencaps means you're losing the only way to upload your own content to the web - well, guess what? You can get a cheap digital camera for under $50 these days, and a not too shabby one for just under $100. Splurge a little - you can actually take the camera outside the house with you!

3. Web pages display weird and it's not faster than the old unit. What? Are you kidding me? On my old Plus unit, everyday I was finding that a page that I visited many times in the past had suddenly become unviewable. eBay was gone. Yahoo Mail was a nightmare. Forget trying to log on to a movie or network TV homepage. With the Internet Explorer 6 and Flash 6 upgrade on the new unit I can actually browse the web again! I especially like the "resize" page feature that lets you expand the webpage back to its original width (meaning a little more scrolling both side to side and up and down) making some otherwise illegible sites readable again. Not faster? I've never used anything but dial-up, so I can't even begin to imagine the broadband version of this new unit, but my dialup experience has been above and beyond. Pages load waaaay faster. The increased memory must help out there. And, oh yeah, the lack of a hard drive makes this unit so quiet I almost forget it's there. If I do get stuck on a non-webtv friendly page, it takes just seconds to reboot and relogon vs the tens of minutes I had to wait for my old Plus unit shut down and reinitialize. Here's something else to think about: I watch video clips on Yahoo! Movies and full music videos on Launch.com with my MSN TV2 - over dialup! (yeah, it's the grainy 56k videos - but they play straight through, no pausing, no skipping, no sound out of sync with the video, I was never able to do that with my PC!)

4. No web eye, the keyboard and everything is different. I guess some people will never be able to change. They must be surfing the web on a black and white tv with actual knobs and no remote control, listening to their music on old record players. Of course everything is different. The web eye? I was concerned about that too - until I realized I could lay my new keyboard on the floor and it would still work with the MSN TV unit way up on top of the entertainment center - it must have a massively wide IR beam. The only way I can't type something in is if I'm completely turned around and not facing my tv at all. Dropped letters? You people must be speed demons - I used to enter data for a living, I still type over 49 words a minute on a slow day and I haven't had any problems.

All in all, the only "Con" I've found so far with this unit is that the new remote will only control RCA/Proscan tv's and the "onscreen" keyboard is history. I used to love laying back on the couch and casually surfing one handed with just the remote controlling everything. Oh, well. A small price to pay after all. Damn MSN!! I guess I should mention chat (even though I hardly ever use it). The new unit will NOT (as of this review) chat over IRC networks or allow you to create your own chatrooms - you're limited to MSN chat. Oh the horror! So, if you're a chat junkie, this would probably be a BIG con for you. For me, I couldn't care less. I'm just tickled pink that my MSN TV2 unit can read videos/MP3's/photos off my USB card reader. That more than makes up for the sucky remote and lack of cool chat. I can pop a card full of pictures into the reader and upload new pics to my Friendster page, or just e-mail them to family/friends. I can take the memory card from my MP3 player and pop it in there and listen to my music over my surround system in the living room. Or I can pull videos off my aging PC and save them to a memory card to be played back full screen on my living room TV - no more wasting time burning video CD's. It all works so well, I'm half tempted to get a broadband connection and wireless network so I can surf faster and use my MSN TV unit to view/listen to files stored on my PC. But only half tempted. The whole reason I've always loved WebTV/MSN TV so much, despite the fact that I DO have a PC is that my MSN TV unit doesn't get viruses, adware, malware, etc. My PC crashes everytime I take it online anymore. It's just not worth it. But I can surf still surf in peace from the comfort my living room couch on my MSN TV2! This whole review, by the by, was written on my new MSN TV2.

I am a computer person, but with some trepidation after reading some of the negative reviews on Amazon, I installed two of the MSNTV2 units over the holidays - one to upgrade my parent's original WebTV and the second for my Mother-in-Law whose visoin is poor. The former is using dial up while the latter is hooked to a cable broadband system. It is important to note that my parents did not use some of the features other reviewers miss from the earlier WebTV products, so for them all their needs are covered. Both `parents' primarily use these systems for email and basic web use, including shopping, music channels and photos. With that background, here are my notes about the units:

Pros:
1. Easy to hook up and easy to use. Nothing fancy or difficult whether upgrading an existing account or establishing a new one. Both units were quickly operational without any glitches (well, see one con below regarding USB).
2. Resolution is far better vs. my parents original WebTV unit, where blue type on a dark blue background on the email screens made reading very difficult. The new higher contrast `dark letters on white background' are much better and the pixel definition is also improved. The resolution improvement is easy to see on some web sites where my parents couldn't read anything before but now the text is legible. Again, this is no match for my laptop, but it is good enough for general use.
3. Related to the above, the new text size +/- buttons make it easy to change the text size on a web page for improved readability. Also, the `resize' button can help with those pages with cramped type. Great features for those with vision problems and they work easily.
4. While the keyboard lacks any TV controls for volume, etc. the keyboard does include ample `one-touch' keys for all the basic email, web and media needs. And neither of the two units had any glitches with the keyboard communications causing dropped letters, etc. that others have cited. One of the units has the keyboard within a foot of the main box, but the other is separated by about 12 feet and worked perfectly unless the signal was blocked by an object.
5. The greater range of file formats that can be viewed is a significant improvement vs. the prior WebTV (not Plus). Electronic greeting cards that were previously unreadable worked perfectly and the ubiquitous pdf files on the web are a great addition. (Almost humorous is the fact that Microsoft's MSNTV2 cannot read Microsoft's .ppt or .pps PowerPoint files! Hmmm . . . I would have really thought a simple PowerPoint reader like those you can download for PCs would have been built in. After all, it would seem in Mr. Softy's best interest to insure that all of their core software could at least be viewed on their own WebTV product, right?)
6. On dial-up the speed is perhaps slightly quicker, but only marginally. In fact, at times it seems to be slower, but that is usually when viewing pages or files that were previously not viewable on the original WebTV. These files, like animated cards and pdf files are often significantly larger than others so they seem slow. On broadband things pop up quite quickly in general, with occasional times when MSN seems to be thinking about it before it sends the page. But once it does, the page pops up quickly. This really shows up when displaying a large .pdf file vs. the dial-up installation.
7. While not perfect, Microsoft's media player does a good job of displaying most videos and playing many, but not all, radio / music stations. Having the media player as a `separate' application is nice since a music station can be playing in the background while surfing the web or reading emails.

Cons:
1. There are still limitations on file sizes and file types (like the PowerPoint noted above) so this is not a solution for someone who wants a `simple computer'. This is a web reader, email client and limited media player that is far easier for non-computer people to use. Not for me personally, but a perfect fit for my parents and mother-in-law.
2. Nice of Microsoft to take the meaning of `Universal' out of their implementation of Universal Serial Bus (USB)!! Okay, so this is not a PC so maybe it is too much to expect it to handle all USB devices, but when I bought a recommended model of USB 802.11 b/g adapter the MSN's site specifically states as being compatible, I would have thought it was! I intentionally avoided any of their recommendations that stated `only version x.x' or some other disclaimer, buying a quality DLink G122 adapter. Plugged it into the MSNTV2 and, voila - a big box stating that the device was not compatible with MSNTV2. I checked it in my laptop just to be sure it was working and, of course, it was. But back into the MSNTV2 and the same `incompatible' box popped up. Fortunately, I could move the cable modem and wireless router to where the MSNTV2 box was so I hardwired it via Ethernet and that worked as it should have. So even if you follow MSN's recommendations on USB adapters or printers, you have the potential that it will not work due to some change in software made by the adapter manufacturer. Be sure you have return privileges on your USB purchases! (FYI, I did try my wireless travel mouse and that worked nicely, including the scroll function that another reviewer said didn't work. Perhaps because mine is a Microsoft mouse?a)
3. No memory expansion? It seems that it would have been relatively easy to allow a plug in of extra memory to allow larger pages to load. I had only one site, featuring lots of photos, not load, but it caused the unit to freeze and a box come up saying to power the unit off and then on to free up the memory. Minor glitch, but plug in memory is relatively cheap - why not allow it.
4. While USB card readers will (theoretically!) work so you can transfer photos, etc. it would have been a lot nicer if Microsoft had built in front loading slots for a few basic memory types like CF and SD.
5. Not sure why Microsoft included the separate remote control. Yes, it works some basic web functions, but it is not a real universal remote (didn't work with my mother-in-law's Panasonic TV and has no VCR or DVD functionality) and the web functions that it has are all easily found on the keyboard. I would gladly give up this remote for memory expansion or a built in card reader.

In summary, after reading some of the `horror' stories that other reviewers have posted I feared that indeed the product was poorly built and worse than prior generations. Maybe the bugs are worked out and the quality of manufacture improved, but having bought and installed two units I have to say that, in general, they work as advertised. Yes, the N-USB (Non-Universal Serial Bus) is a potential headache and the occasional file type or page size problem will crop up, but for their intended uses, both units worked quite well right out of the box. Heck, I have had more problems getting a PC to do what I want at times, so the minor glitches here seem minor in comparison, especially for the targeted user group.

So if you do not need a full PC, only want basic email, internet and media playback, and you understand / accept the limitations of the MSNTV2, this could very well be an excellent solution for you. However, if you need much more functionality, and you are willing to put up with the more complex demands of a PC (software upgrades, security and virus issues, etc.) then a PC of some type is your only solution. (Having spent a couple of very intense days helping a friend clean up mass quantities of viruses and spyware from two of their PCs, I now realize that some PC users probably shouldn't be PC users! Or at least they must have some basic understanding about keeping virus and spyware software updated and active!) I can tell you that both my parents and mother-in-law think this generation of MSNTV2 is perfect for them.

I had WEBTV & WEBTV PLUS for 10 years and despite some limitations I for the most part liked it. Can't say that for MSN TV 2. Read the reviews cautioning purchase but did not believe them or didn't want to believe them. What a mistake! Believe me if you had WEBTV you will not like MSN TV. Do yourself a favor and keep you your WEBTV!!!