WebTV Offers Cheap Web Access, But Consumers Are Wary nytimes.com
This is quite a long article, moderate but skeptical in tone.
So far, WebTV has 250,000 subscribers, Perlman said. That is surprisingly modest, many media experts agree, when compared with the 11 million subscribers to America Online, the biggest online service in the United States.
WebTV has been hard at work trying to entice more buyers, Perlman said. WebTV Plus, the company's latest and more expensive version, released in December, creates a Web-in-picture window on television screens so TV viewing does not have to be interrupted if a viewer wants to cruise the Internet. Unlike the "Classic" models, WebTV Plus has a hard drive.
Computer, TV tuner, hard disk, and $200 retail? Sounds like a loss leader, like the video consoles are supposed to be, but maybe more so at current volumes. Which is OK if they make money on subscriptions, but that may be problematic too, at the 250,000 sub. level.
Despite WebTV's generally acknowledged success in resizing and rendering Internet sites onto common television screens, some WebTV users complain that some of the type is too small to read comfortably from an average television viewing distance of six to eight feet.
That, too, may be a problem, Clemente said, because the Internet is primarily text-based and geared toward delivering information rather than entertainment.
On the other hand, when I looked at it, it displayed less text than a cheezo vga monitor or 24x80 dumb tty-style terminal. Plus, it's like a supercharged remote control, which is fine for the surfer with the keyboard/remote but sucks eggs for anybody else who might be watching. For now, convergence looks like push writ large to me. Or maybe it's just a generation away.
Cheers, Dan. |
