Microsoft offered to acquire WebTV, build a Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley around WebTV, and establish WebTV as a Microsoft division to develop television-based products and services, with Perlman as the division's president.

Subsequent to the acquisition, WebTV became a Silicon Valley-based division of Microsoft, with Steve Perlman as its president.

In July 2001, six years after WebTV's founding, Microsoft rebranded WebTV as MSN TV, and the WebTV division was dissolved, although the WebTV engineers continued to work for Microsoft, many of them working on Microsoft's Xbox video game system or Microsoft IPTV technology, offering television programming over the internet.

On Sunday, April 6, 1997, 20 months after WebTV's founding, and only six weeks after negotiations with Microsoft began, during a scheduled speech at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Craig Mundie announced that Microsoft had acquired WebTV.

While most thin clients developed in the mid-1990s were positioned as diskless workstations for corporate intranets, WebTV was positioned as a consumer device for web access.

The acquisition price was US $ 503 million, but WebTV was so young a company that most of the employees ' stock options had yet to be vested.

It was also used for Microsoft's WebTV for Windows and Intel's Intercast.

This was the first TV set-top box from a major vendor that offered high-end online gaming, internet access, and interactive television, as well as the first glimpse at WebTV running on Microsoft's Windows CE operating system.

Leak became the President of Microsoft's WebTV Network subsidiary.

WebTV was announced on July 10, 1996, generating a large wave of press attention as not only the first television-based use of the World Wide Web, but also as the first consumer-electronics device to access the World Wide Web without a personal computer.

Gates called Perlman at his home on Easter Sunday in March 1997, and Perlman described to Gates WebTV's next generation products in development, which would be the first consumer devices to incorporate hard disks, including the WebTV Plus, and the WebTV Digital Video Recorders.

After gaining online syndication partners including Lycos. com and WebTV, the series first adopted Flash animation in July 1998.

* " La société européenne " ( in French by Catherine Cathiard for TVDMA, the first WebTV of Law & Management Business and Entreprises )

WebTV closed its first round of financing, US $ 1, 500, 000, from Marvin Davis in September, 1995 and developed a prototype WebTV set-top box, based upon a custom chip and custom software, and also developed a WebTV online service that the WebTV set-top boxes would automatically dial into using a dial-up modem that provided subscriber services such as HTML-based email, and proxied websites accessed by the WebTV set-top box so as to make them display more efficiently on a television screen.

Because Sony had insisted upon exclusive distribution rights for the first year, WebTV had no other distribution partner in place, and just before WebTV was to close venture capital financing from Brentwood Associates, Sony sent WebTV a certified letter stating it had decided not to proceed with WebTV.

WebTV was launched on September 18, 1996, within one year after its first round of financing, with WebTV set-top boxes in stores from Sony and Philips, and WebTV's online service running from servers in its tiny office, still based in the former BMW dealership.

There was little difference between the first Sony and the Philips WebTV set-top boxes, except for the housing and packaging.

WebTV achieved profitability by Spring 1998, and grossed over US $ 1. 3 billion in revenue through its first 8 years of operation.

The first WebTV set-top boxes had a 33. 6 kbit / s modem, and later versions had 56kbit / s modems.

The first effort, the Metabox 100, simply enabled users to cheaply access Metabox's ISP service — kind of a German WebTV.

WebTV produced reference designs of models incorporating a disk-based personal video recorder and a satellite tuner for EchoStar's Dish Network ( called " Dishplayer ") and for DirecTV ( called " UltimateTV ").

Telidon had a more lasting legacy on the hardware side ; its NABTS communications system found re-use years later in WebTV for Windows.

MSN TV ( formerly WebTV ) is the name of both a thin client which uses a television for display ( rather than a computer monitor ), and the online service that supports it.

The WebTV product is an adapter that allows a television set to be connected to the Internet, primarily for web browsing and e-mail.

The dwarf rabbit reference was an inside joke among WebTV's hard-working engineers — Phil Goldman's pet house rabbit Bowser ( inspiration for the General Magic logo ) was often found roaming the WebTV building late into the night while the engineers were working — although WebTV actually received inquiries from real research groups conducting similar studies and seeking to exchange data.

WebTV Networks ' business model was to license a reference design to consumer electronics companies for a WebTV Internet Terminal, a set-top box that attached to a telephone line and automatically connected to the Internet through a dial-up modem.

WebTV's income was derived from operating the WebTV Service, an Internet-based service for which it collected a fee from WebTV subscribers.

It was a critical juncture for WebTV, because the Brentwood financing had been predicated on the expectation of a future relationship with Sony, and if Brentwood had decided to not proceed with the financing after being told that Sony had backed out, WebTV would have gone bankrupt and Perlman would have lost everything.

The initial price for the WebTV set-top box was US $ 349 for the Sony version and US $ 329 for the Philips version, with a wireless keyboard available for about an extra US $ 50.

The product and service was developed by WebTV Networks, Inc., a company purchased by Microsoft Corporation and absorbed into MSN ( the Microsoft Network ).

WebTV Networks was purchased by Microsoft in 1996 and absorbed into the Microsoft Network.

The R4650 was used in the original WebTV set-top boxes ( now Microsoft TV ).

* VisualcontainerTV International Videoart WebTV Videoart streaming TV since 2009.

One interesting feature of the WebTV set-top box was that, while downloading TV schedule information overnight, it would also check to see if there was any email waiting.

Because the WebTV client was subsidized hardware, the company had always required individual subscriptions for each box, but with the subsidies ended, MSN started offering free use of MSN TV boxes to their computer users who subscribed to MSN, as an incentive to not stray to discount dialup ISPs.

From her apartment, she accessed the Internet via MSN TV ( formerly WebTV ) Internet service provider.

WebTV hardware

The inherent flexibility and scalability of the new core network approach resulted in an unprecedented rise of classical services deployment as POTS / ISDN, Centrex, ADSL, VPN, as well as implementation of higher bandwidths for the Metro and Long-distance Ethernet / VPN services, cross-national transits and WebTV / IPTV application.

In 1997, Mundie oversaw the acquisition of WebTV Networks.

While WebTV does not allow as much functionality as a computer-based web browser, it is a low-cost alternative to a traditional computer connection to the Internet.

WebTV Networks was founded in July 1995.

The consumer electronics companies ' income was derived from selling the WebTV set-top box.

By the spring of 1996 WebTV Networks employed approximately 70 people, many of them finishing their senior year at nearby Stanford University, or former employees of either Apple Computer or General Magic.

WebTV had started negotiating with Sony to manufacture and distribute the WebTV set-top box, but negotiations had taken much longer than WebTV had expected, and WebTV had used up its initial funding.