WebTV

Ballmer's rival for YouTube?

[Samizdata]

Seen today from 209.240.206.* - apparently some company named Microsoft.

Mozilla/4.0 WebTV/2.6 (compatible; MSIE 4.0)

Only took images (blocked in robots.txt) so I assume it was a Redmond bot of some sort.

The only (relatively) recent reference on WebmasterWorld was the last real user on Earth in 2007:

[webmasterworld.com...]

I actually have a WebTV emulator for Mac OS9 which I occasionaly point at one of my sites when I am terminally bored or need a laugh, but that one always shows my own IP address.

...

[wilderness]

That is a valid UA & IP for Web-TV.
There's also another UA for the newer machine and I've seen
Have some notes on 2.8 ver as well.
other IP's besides the 209.240.

I've some old-timers that use these machines.
These widget visitors been coming to my sites for so long, that I generally make excceptions, as these older folks are able to provide some valid widget insights that others cannot.

I have the WEB-Tv emulator as well, however MS has not offered am update. Their users must be a very small share.

It's entirely possible for a user to save a webpage (requesting images only), however the early machines only offered a 4meg storage capacity.
The later machines had a hard drive (no clue of size).

[Samizdata]

Thanks Don, interesting information.

Although on my primary site I have an intercept for WebTV, no user ever turned up.

I haven't bothered on recent sites, and the emulator suggests that the user experience will be pretty grim.

...

[wilderness]

The newer machines UA.

"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; STB; 560x384; MSNTV 4.1; THMDR)"

The IP I had on this particualr reference was a Qwest, however, the IP's are not uniform (i. e., 209.240.) and may be most anything.

edited by wilderness.

I should note that most of my WEB-TV/MSN-TV patrons are part of an email discussion group, which results in easy verifcation when they visit directed URL's.

[caribguy]

I'm seeing:

209.240.207.7n "Mozilla/3.0 WebTV/1.2 (compatible; MSIE 2.0)"
209.240.206.2nn "Mozilla/4.0 WebTV/2.6 (compatible; MSIE 4.0)"

Must be a horrible user experience...

[GaryK]

The most current MSNTV UA I've seen is:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; STB; 560x384; MSNTV 4.3; THMDR)

The most current WebTV UA I've seen is:

Mozilla/4.0 WebTV/2.9 (compatible; MSIE 4.0)

It's a PITA to read text on WebTV/MSNTV. In addition to it being inherently difficult to read computer text on a TV screen, everything gets forcibly resized to 560x384.