Palo Alto, California-based WebTV is offering a reference platform design that¦ll deliver dial-up Internet services to your television, first through set-top devices expected by October that¦ll plug in to existing televisions, then next year integrated into new television designs. WebTV It says the solution will be cheaper than cable modems. Web browsing and email should only raise the price of a television by between $50 and $100, WebTV estimates. It¦s licensing its design to some unspecified consumer electronics companies which will build the set-tops and Web-enabled televisions; WebTV aims to make its money by charging fees as the Internet service provider. It plans to turn a portion of its subscriber fees over to the hardware providers in an attempt to attract volume manufacturers. It sounds like the company wants to revisit this stuff over and over as its also not saying which processor the design uses. Users will be expected to control the Web through yet another remote control and can expect the WebTV Network to function somewhere in between a full-blown online service and an Internet gateway to aggregate content. It¦s including security software to prevent minors from getting access beyond an approved site list and there¦ll be a call waiting feature to tell users to turn off WebTV and pick up the telephone. WebTV says it has filed 35 patent applications. WebTV is Steve Perlman¦s third start-up; he previously helped design General Magic Inc¦s MagicTV which was never released. He claims other Internet TV offerings will be more expensive than WebTV because they are trying to emulate PC behaviour. Perlman hopes the company will break even in its second year.
