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.
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.