In 1997, Mundie oversaw the acquisition of WebTV Networks.

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 founded in July 1995.

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.

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.

He is one of the co-founders of WebTV Networks, a company founded in 1995 that enabled households to access the Internet through their televisions.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

* " 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.

By April 1997, WebTV had only 56, 000 subscribers, but the pace of subscriber growth accelerated after that, achieving 150, 000 subscribers by Autumn 1997, about 325, 000 subscribers by April 1998 and about 800, 000 subscribers by May 1999.

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

Because WebTV utilized strong encryption, upon launch in 1996, WebTV was classified as munitions ( a military weapon ) by the United States government and was therefore barred from export under United States security laws at the time.

The WebTV set-top boxes used a caching proxy for acceleration capable of reformatting and compressing web pages, a feature generally unavailable to dialup ISPs users at the time and as such, had to be developed by WebTV.

For web browsing purposes, given WebTV's thin client software, there was no need for a hard disk, but by putting the browser in non-volatile memory, upgrades could be downloaded from the WebTV service.

They also launched an international service available exclusively online by logging into the Sky Angel Website called Sky Angel WebTV.

In the same year, Rearden Steel was started by Steve Perlman, founder of WebTV, under a veil of secrecy.

Despite the fact that the initial WebTV sales had been modest, Mundie expressed that Microsoft was impressed with WebTV and saw significant potential both in WebTV's product offering and in applying the technology to other Microsoft consumer and video product offerings.

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.

Gates ' interest was piqued, and negotiations between Microsoft and WebTV rapidly proceeded to closure, with both sides working around the clock to get the deal done.

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.

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

Microsoft worked with Sega in that same year and developed Microsoft WebTV for the Dreamcast game console.

The web browser was compatible with both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer and the WebTV set-top box featured 2 MB of RAM.

product In 2001, EchoStar sued Microsoft for failing to support the WebTV Dishplayer.

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.

Devices with the capabilities of computer terminals, such as the WebTV thin client, also fall into the grey area that could invite the term " NTB ".

The WebTV division began developing most of Microsoft's television-based products, including the first satellite Digital Video Recorders ( the DishPlayer for EchoStar's Dish Network and UltimateTV for DirecTV ), Microsoft's cable TV products, the Xbox 360 hardware, and Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV platform.

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 ").

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

* VisualcontainerTV International Videoart WebTV Videoart streaming TV since 2009.

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.

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 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.