Web-TV

[donpedro]

I have started getting visitors to my site using Web-TV. I have a couple of questions I hope somebody can answer:
1)Can anybody tell in what country/countries Web-TV already has started?
2) Is Web-TV same as digital-TV?
3)Does Web-TV use some special browser or what?
4)Is the resolution on Web-TV 150 or 72 dpi?
Donpedro

[bcolflesh]

WebTV is now MSNTV - info here:

msntv.com/pc/default.aspx

[seeber01]

You can test your site for WebTV at anybrowser.com also.

[robert adams]

Web TV has been around for years. It is a set top box that you get for your TV and the internet service.
yes it has it's own kind of browser. From what I have heard, it is so bad that most people don't even bother to create pages that work in it.

robert

[pendanticist]

>From what I have heard, it is so bad that most people don't even bother to create pages that work in it.

Hearing and Knowing are two different things. No offense. :)

To date there are approximately 1M WebTV/MSNTV set top boxes in use (and new Television ads running in the US for this Christmas season).

Of those each one can have six users.

Each user can set up a webpage.

Doing the math, that is potential for 6M sites.

Additional reading:

Webtv site:webmasterworld.com [google.com].

[webmasterworld.com...]

how many webtv homepages are there? [web.ask.com]

http://www.webtv.net/pc/whatis_pagebuilder.aspx

While some folks seem eager to 'discount' those machines not of the 'computing' type. I do not.

Pendanticist.

[krieves]

My mother-in-law has webTV. The only thing uses for is for email. The browser is so bad, most websites don't display properly. She got frustrated very quickly trying to use it on the Internet. It's been a while since I tried to use it (a few years actually), but if I remember right, it doesn't understand any scripting languages.

We made the decision not to support webTV based on the volume of people (a fraction of a percent of total visitors) that come to our site using it.

[Robino]

I pretend WebTV doesn't exist. People that use WebTV probably aren't going to open up their wallets online anyway.

[bcolflesh]

The browser is so bad, most websites don't display properly.

I think this is actually:

Most websites are coded so poorly, they don't display properly -

I don't own or have ever used MSN TV(WebTV), but I get regular emails from users who can't believe they can actually navigate and buy things from my sites with it - so the rest of you, please keep ignoring it! ;)

[Robino]

but I get regular emails from users...

Do those emails contain their credit card numbers?

[pendanticist]

>People that use WebTV probably aren't going to open up their wallets online anyway.

Why not? I'm interested in hearing your reasoning.

WebTV Browser -- and WebTV Business? [webmasterworld.com]

Pendanticist.

[krieves]

On our website over the past year, webTV users made up .04% of our site visitors. That's not 4%, it's 4 tenths of 1 percent... not a significant number for changing the website.

[Robino]

My reasoning is pretty simple (but very scientific):

If they're too dumb/cheap to get a real ISP, then they're probably too cheap to buy our products. I'm not shutting them out completely (AFAIK). I just don't take WebTV into consideration when designing.

I should note that all of my sites are B2B.

And, BTW- It's almost 2004!

[pendanticist]

>If they're too dumb/cheap to get a real ISP..

Your premise is based on an assumption and therefore totally innacurate.

Just for clarification - MSN/WebTV subscribers have the option of either using MSN or an ISP in their geographical area.

As for them being 'dumb' or 'cheap'... I'm gonna be nice and not address that part except perhaps a few Tsk, tsk, tsks.

But, like bcolflesh said:

I don't own or have ever used MSN TV(WebTV), but I get regular emails from users who can't believe they can actually navigate and buy things from my sites with it - so the rest of you, please keep ignoring it! :)

Pendanticist.

[Robino]

ok- thanks for the clarification pend. This thread is actually the most I've thought about WebTv in years (maybe ever)!

So, maybe I'm an irresponsible Webmaster. I can honestly say that I've only seen it a handfull of times in my logs.

Hopefully I didn't turn away the potential million dollar WebTv account by not rendering properly. YIKES!

At any rate, now you've got me thinking about it and I'll be sure to do some reading and testing. Thanks!

[sidyadav]

krieves said:

if I remember right, it doesn't understand any scripting languages.

If it doesn't support any scripting languages, can you search Google with Web-TV?

Because if you can't, how the hell are you gonna get 0.00001 percent traffic with it?

Sid

[davidpbrown]

When I tested a simple tv.css, ~text only + black background/white text, in the MSN viewer, it didn't read the media tags correctly.

It picked up and used all the other css files on top of the tv.css!.. bit of a mess..

[donpedro]

Thanks for all answers. It seems I opened the "great divider" again. = "Who's the King on the Net?"
Is it the Website designer or the Website user.?

Sorry to say, but my site is a global one (2003 = visitors repr. 78 languages) so I have to take into account also 1% of different browsers.

There's still a couple of technical questions I'm looking for the answers to:
2) The Web TV browser. Would it be something like IE 4.0 or NS 4.7 or what?
3) I think the resolution for TV and computer is 72 dpi, but I cannot find confirmation on that. Any body know for sure?

Anyway, why use css if less than 50% visitor browsers can read it?

donpedro

[sidyadav]

Anyway, why use css if less than 50% visitor browsers can read it?

50%? IE can read it, Opera can read it, Netscape can read it, Mozilla can read it, Safari can read it and so many other browsers can.
Web-TV can also read it, but if you read davidpbrown's post correctly, he didn't say "Web-TV can't read CSS", he said "Web TV can read CSS, but its messy".
Almost every browser on earth can read CSS, but not properly, and still I don't know from where the 50% came from.
And if you don't use CSS, you'll end up with a "Grandma's old attic" type design. 80% of the web use CSS, if a visitor see's that a browser doesn't support CSS (or if its a newbie user on the net - can't view pages properly), what will he do? continue using it? or STOP USING IT AND SHIFT TO ANOTHER BROWSER?

Sid

[donpedro]

Sidyadav,
Sorry, may be I expressed myself wrongly! I wasn't talking about 50% of browsers, I was talking of 50% VISITORS. There's still a lot of people around using older "model" browsers.

Sure I agree with you, most modern browsers can read css at least basically. And IE 6.0 has grown considerably during later half of this year, so may be in a few years time even the grandfathers will get a new browser.

BTW, the stats came from my own site.
Regards/donpedro

[hartlandcat]

Use CSS, and then use @import to hide CSS from buggy browsers (like Netscape 4). If a browser doesn't support CSS at all, it will just be ignored. It won't create something hideous instead (NN4, IE3, and to a lesser extent, IE4 are the only browsers that really do this).

You say that nearly 50% of your visitors are using browsers which don't support CSS. Unless you're running a help site for Amiga OS users, then I find that very hard to believe. Are nearly 50% of your visitors really using Netscape 3.0 and below, IE 3.0 and below (even though IE3 does supprt *some* CSS, it's support is so limited, its best to count it as a non-CSS browser), Opera 3.0 and below and the like?

Maybe you'd like to post a summary of your actual browser stats here. I (or someone else) will be able to tell you the percentage of your visitors which are using browsers that don't support CSS.

[donpedro]

I stand corrected!

donpedro