"WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

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wtv-411
undertow
Posts: 27

"WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#1 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 12:06 pm

UPDATE (10/02/2022): Hey people, quick update. I have officially departed from the WebTV Wiki project and have since moved on to bigger and better things. That's not to say that the wiki is going to shut down any time soon though. I have passed down ownership onto JarHead, who I know will do a bit more with the wiki than I ever could, and the wiki has moved to https://wiki.webtv.zone. Same old content is there, just being hosted by a new person. The wiki will also continue to receive updates. Right now, the old domain simply redirects to the main page of the new wiki, but I will eventually shut the server and domain down in due time. I will be updating any links I posted with the old domain to use the new domain instead if possible.

UPDATE (07/26/2022): Hello. I haven't posted here in a long while but I have some important news on the whole WebTV project I've started a year ago. Long story short, I have no more interest in actively participating in it anymore and I want to focus on more engaging and important things in my life. So I'm just leaving this here to say that I'm no longer looking for any WebTV DC TellyScripts or anything else regarding WebTV for Dreamcast. You all may feel free to archive and share that stuff yourselves on your own terms, but I won't be putting any more information on my wiki or upload it myself elsewhere.

Also I cut down parts of the original post because jesus christ I think I went on a bit too much about why I despised how the WebTV hacking scene treated documentation and preservation.




Hello people. I come here in an effort to spread awareness of the "WebTV for Dreamcast" software in hopes that at least people will realize that efforts have been made recently to document it along with its service and other WebTV-related topics, as it actually has quite a bit to it in terms of how it functions. Not sure if it counts as an online "game," but this is the Online section so I feel it's appropriate to post this here. I imagine most of you are asking, "What is WebTV for Dreamcast?", and in extension, "What is a WebTV?" I'll answer that right now.

To most people's dismay (and mine too), it's not a video streaming service from the 90s. What it is however is both a series of products and a service that launched in 1996 in the U.S., and about 1-2 years later in Japan, that aimed to bring the Internet to the average Joe, originally by designing set-top boxes that would be manufactured by licensed WebTV partners that'd only require a telephone line and a monthly subscription to a specialized WebTV service to connect to the Internet. Not only would it let the average person connect to the general Internet, but it also had its own proprietary version of the Internet users could explore, offering its own services such as discussion groups, e-mail, news, search, and chatrooms, not much different from classic AOL on desktop computers. While it didn't really make much of an impact when it launched, and WebTV had its own issues with compatibility for the general Internet, it remained relatively obscure and active until September 2013 of all things (which by that point it was already renamed to MSN TV). It's time in Japan was much shorter, however, having its service end in March of 2002. While it was active in Japan, though, it got a release on the Dreamcast in 1999 with the official name "Microsoft WebTV Connection Kit", which was essentially the WebTV software pressed onto a GD-ROM. It was mainly available through mail order (both snail and e-mail), and while it possibly didn't offer anything too different from what the dedicated WebTV hardware had, it's still an interesting piece of software seeing as like the dedicated hardware, it utilized its own fully fledged protocols to deliver proprietary service content and Internet content to end users, and it was ahead of its time, making it something worth learning about technically.

Problem with that, though, not much information about the service or even the product's technology has survived or came out at all. Before 2019, no such attempts were made to coherently document it, and while WebTV's own hacking scene was actually hard at work to make sense of the service and its protocols and learned quite a bit about it, doing some digging reveals they were not the kind to consider publicly documenting stuff like that and had a thing for keeping it under the public eye, whether it be for selfish reasons or fear of legal action/misuse of exploits, not to mention most "hackers" didn't even dig deep into learning about the service on a technical level. Whatever the case may be, even after the service had long been shut down, they don't seem to be keen on documenting what they've learned over the years. One example that comes to mind for me is a "server emulator" released three years ago by notorious WebTV "hacker" MattMan69, which is essentially a small Perl server someone else wrote that barely supports WebTV for Dreamcast and only has a mock home page and web browsing services set up, the latter only being powered by an external server said hacker operates, expecting people to build their own entire WebTV service with it. Point is, these people, while very few are willing to contribute more crucial information and content now on a small level, are still very hesitant with publicizing their WebTV knowledge. This is a shame, honestly.

Good news is, there have been attempts to fill in the gaps in terms of WebTV information that would otherwise be lost. First off, a dedicated WebTV wiki launched a few months ago doing its best to properly preserve WebTV content and document previously obscure information about the WebTV service and its protocols, with it actively seeking for those who might have critical information that's otherwise undocumented. Second, new information has been uncovered about the Dreamcast version of WebTV in particular recently (which I updated with information originally only on the WebTV wiki, BTW) , including a previously unknown comic (manga?) included with the registration postcards used to request the discs. While most new information uncovered isn't specific to the one in Japan, these are all a good start to getting a better understanding of WebTV in general and eventually, the Japan/Dreamcast side of things. Who knows, someone might be able to make a proper server for WebTV some day, even if it'd be useless with the modern internet. :lol:

In the meantime, spread the word to people you think might be interested in this effort. If you're up to reverse engineering the Dreamcast WebTV disc, go all in with that. If you know someone who might know a thing or two about the WebTV software or service, Dreamcast or otherwise, reach out to them! Hell, manual scans of the Dreamcast version or any other materials pertaining to Dreamcast WebTV would be valuable, doesn't matter to me (should've clarified this earlier lol). WebTV in the end is a niche product that only satisfied a niche audience with some information on it that's not 100% verified floating on the internet, and while I might've not been part of that original audience or someone who thinks WebTV was flawless, I do think it's worth uncovering as much as we can learn about it, both on the East and West coast side of things.
Last edited by wtv-411 on Sun Oct 02, 2022 9:16 am, edited 7 times in total.

slayer2k8
undertow
Posts: 25

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#2 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:43 pm

I’m not sure what the goal is here do you want to be actually be able to use the Dreamcast WebTV discs?

The wiki you linked is basically a slightly redone copy of the SEGA retro page while i know a lot of the information on that site is either wrong or stolen from other places surely it would be best to cite the sources on the wiki.

Do you actually own any of the Dreamcast discs or are you more interested in WebTV in general?

To be perfectly honest you seem to be upset about the ‘hackers’ simply because they won’t give you access. To be fair i have no knowledge about the preservation of the infrastructure but you seem to be happy to want to others reverse engineer the software for you.

wtv-411
undertow
Posts: 27

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#3 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 2:09 pm

I'm more interested in WebTV as a whole, learning how the services worked and what went into everything to make it possible. I will admit the wiki is not 100% my information, but I don't try to pass it off as if it is and I do try to give proper credit where due (for images, they're in the file description). I don't intend to portray myself as the WebTV messiah that can't get anything wrong and this is more or less a hobby for me when I get enough free time. If there's anything I get wrong with the information that you can confirm on, feel free to correct me. By the way, most of the recent information from the WebTV Dreamcast page on Sega Retro was originally only on my wiki for a while, and I simply added it in myself. ;)

My issue isn't with hackers giving me exclusive access to anything, and if they simply just did that, that wouldn't exactly make me happy or accomplish my ultimate goal, which is to not only preserve information and content but also document it for others to understand and make WebTV information liberated. It's more that as someone who's eager to learn more about the technical side of things in regards to WebTV, seeing that those "hackers" have basically all technical information on the service, enough to boast about having their own full WebTV server, yet don't even consider or acknowledge that having that information public would be a good idea rubs me the wrong way. It's not even their IP if I'm being honest. I've reached out to one of the few that actually know their stuff about WebTV about potentially documenting the protocols back when their WebTV server was public (they only had contact open through email on that private server). They straight up skipped that question. I also ask people to spread the word or consider doing something about it themselves because as it stands, those currently interested in WebTV and have a presence on the internet aren't exactly people willing to jump into reverse engineering, myself included, or are just not very interested in the technical side of WebTV. If I could reverse engineer things myself or get the holy grail of WebTV staff contacts, I would use that to my advantage almost immediately. Also don't forget that WebTV was not something many people cared about or even knew existed, so I feel as if spreading the word and convincing people to at least consider doing something if they want to is the best option for now.

By the way, yes, I do indeed have original copies of the WebTV Dreamcast discs. Wouldn't say I exactly want to use them, though. :p

slayer2k8
undertow
Posts: 25

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#4 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:29 pm

Again, i only own the discs i can honestly say i never used them.

About SEGA Retro while a massive site which has a lot of knowledge a lot of information is added without crediting those who own/document their items/work. I perhaps naively just assumed that wiki was a cut & paste from SEGA Retro.

I think if i'm remembering correctly that it was quite expensive to use (Dreamcast WebTV) i have no idea about the computer side. I suspect that with the Dreamcast being an internet terminal that was what Microsoft saw in the system.

No doubt with their involvement with SEGA with WinCE i expect that WebTV was something they were keen to have on the system given the projected sales figures.

With regards to those who have managed to get the software running i think you eluded that Microsoft potentially might take umbrage with their actions especially if they were to distribute it. I have no idea how they deal with such actions but i can imagine legal action would be an option.

While it won't immediately be possible at some point i could scan/provide photos of the WebTV paperwork that came with my system.

wtv-411
undertow
Posts: 27

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#5 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 6:03 pm

slayer2k8 wrote:With regards to those who have managed to get the software running i think you eluded that Microsoft potentially might take umbrage with their actions especially if they were to distribute it. I have no idea how they deal with such actions but i can imagine legal action would be an option.


What I was trying to get at with the original post is that that's the reason all the scene people use to not share any more information concerning the service itself, even if it's as non-incriminating as simple protocol information or HTML/images from the WebTV service pages. When I asked them about it, I never even suggested it had to be from internal documents or anything confidential. They just seem to dance around those kind of questions. Granted, some of the service content has been publicly archived, but the amount of HTML service pages archived right now is underwhelming and poorly organized, and the current site archiving service images does it in a way that's very messy and unorganized. Not to mention those HTML rips don't account for the server-side logic required to make them, well, work.

Only one of the scene people I've gotten in contact with were actually pretty lax with what WebTV materials they shared and allowed me to host elsewhere, and that was mostly firmware ROMs for the dedicated hardware and tools they made to mess with the proprietary WebTV formats, the former which I can see people getting concerned about MS taking legal action over. Regardless of what content they're concerned over, I personally think Microsoft stopped caring about WebTV so much that legal issues are the least of our concern right now. Aside from them leaving the U.S. service up all the way into 2013 with next to no public acknowledgement, from my observations they stopped caring about their WebTV product as a whole once the MSNTV 2 released, which was essentially a Windows CE box designed for use with the MSN TV service. That was the last piece of WebTV hardware to be released before Microsoft stopped distributing hardware in 2010.

slayer2k8 wrote:While it won't immediately be possible at some point i could scan/provide photos of the WebTV paperwork that came with my system.


Awesome sauce! Feel free to upload them when you get the chance. It'd be at least one more puzzle piece to the incomplete WebTV puzzle.

wtv-411
undertow
Posts: 27

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#6 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 6:22 pm

By the way, if anyone can find a source on the image from the Sega Retro page below, that'd be wonderful. I doubt it's really fabricated but at the same time the "SEGA-E3" username at the bottom throws me off, and I'd just like to know as I don't think I even have enough time to research that specific image deep enough (Google reverse image search gives me nothing useful BTW).

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RoMagnusLarsson
dark night
Posts: 56

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#7 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:17 pm

A translation project first ! then it maybe connects !

wtv-411
undertow
Posts: 27

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#8 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:31 pm

RoMagnusLarsson wrote:A translation project first ! then it maybe connects !


..Elaborate. Also should go without saying that a translation project for something designed to use a proprietary service, still needs the proprietary service regardless of what language the software is in now.

slayer2k8
undertow
Posts: 25

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#9 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 8:44 pm

That image is probably what the username suggests. Likely SEGA was demonstrating the functionally at E3 with someone back in Japan.

Btw the service cost 2,000 yen for fifteen hours access with a five yen-per-minute charge after the fifteen hours had been used up. The Dreamcast service started on the 23rd April '99 i dig around in my archive to see when it finished.

The 'comic' is just the flyer included with early Dreamcast's to send off to receive the WebTV disc. It was also distributed at TGS Spring '99.

wtv-411
undertow
Posts: 27

Re: "WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

Post#10 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 9:02 pm

slayer2k8 wrote:That image is probably what the username suggests. Likely SEGA was demonstrating the functionally at E3 with someone back in Japan.

Btw the service cost 2,000 yen for fifteen hours access with a five yen-per-minute charge after the fifteen hours had been used up. The Dreamcast service started on the 23rd April '99 i dig around in my archive to see when it finished.

The 'comic' is just the flyer included with early Dreamcast's to send off to receive the WebTV disc. It was also distributed at TGS Spring '99.


Honestly, yeah a flyer is a much better way to describe "Luck'n Luck WebTV". Too short to really be a comic and not full of content to consider it as a manga lol.

I think according to the Japanese WebTV site in 2002, passing the discontinuation page through Google Translate, the service apparently ended at the end of March 2002. Don't quote me on that, though. Also 2000 yen for WebTV service at the time doesn't sound too shabby. That's around $18 after putting the yen price into inflation.

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