WebTV promised to be a solution for anyone in the mid-90s who wanted to explore the then-emerging Internet, but didn’t have access to a personal computer. The device is still manufactured today, now called MSN TV, but sales never quite seemed to take off.

“Ultimately the Web on TV was just not compelling to a lot of consumers,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at market research firm NPD Group.

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The idea behind WebTV was to broaden the audience of the Internet and email by removing the need for a computer and instead using devices that most consumers have in their homes: a television and a phone line.

While this was great for people who may be overwhelmed by a PC and for those who couldn’t afford a computer or didn’t have room for one, there were limitations that prevented the device from really taking off, said Rubin.

One problem was a slow adoption of plug-ins, which allow a Web browser to display extras like video and music. It was difficult to push updated plug-ins to the device, partly because it was tough to place bets on which formats would win as they competed with each other, said Rubin. 

The experience of browsing the Web, in spite of how the device reformats Web pages, was just never as good on a TV as on a computer screen. “The Web benefits from a high resolution screen, which TVs don’t support. And a lot of consumers don’t want to use a keyboard in the living room,” he said. 

Another weakness, according to Rubin, was the monthly subscription required for the device to work. While this wasn’t a big deal during the days of dial-up because the subscription included dial-up access, when consumers began shifting toward broadband, which was not included with the service, the device lost its appeal.

Microsoft (MSFT) ended up buying WebTV Networks and re-branding the product as MSN TV.  Microsoft released MSN TV 2 a couple years ago, which added a few new features, including broadband support and the ability to stream content from a PC. However, the device still requires a paid subscription. 

But have consumer electronic companies learned from the limitations of WebTV?

“There’s been tremendous interest in the last two years in particular in adding Internet connectivity to the TV, although not for full Web browsing but for doing things like streaming content from the PC, which Pioneer’s Elite TVs can do and the HP MediaSmart TV… This has been in response to the notion that the TV is really all about video,” said Rubin.

Now that people are buying HDTVs with larger screens, information and text is something that can be presented on them in more of a complementary way, rather than taking over the whole screen like WebTV did, noted the analyst.

Though the demand for a stand-alone Internet device seems rather low, there are many devices that use information from the Internet or offer a browser as a secondary feature. These include all of the current game consoles, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii, as well as other devices that connect to the TV such as TiVo, Netflix’s Roku box, and Apple TV. Many of these devices stream or download movies, television, and music from the Internet. The game consoles also allow gamers to play multiplayer games over the Internet with people all over the world.