RCA/MSN TV 2 Internet and Media Player

My mother got one of these for Christmas. We set it up in our house first and tested it a couple days before giving it to her since she had previously tried a couple of PCs with very poor results (not the PC's fault). We went through every single option available except for hooking up a memory card reader and everything worked great. The account setup was almost instant, the email works fine and the web browsing is fine (although I prefer a higher resolution myself). It's actually not bad on her fairly new Sony TV. Neither she nor we previously used WebTV, but I like the functionality of this unit and it does everything she wanted and more (music & videos). With the $100 rebate, the price is super-affordable and this is a near-perfect option for people who are justifiably afraid of a PC (malware, etc) or just can't learn how to use one (my mother). We already have broadband and her apartment has access to our network, so we purchased the $100 annual account for her. For less than $100 in hardware and less than $9/mo, she can keep in touch with lots of family members and browse the web for news, weather and medical information. We hope the service and hardware are reliable, but the first week's experience has been nothing but positive.

I bought this to replace an old Classic that finally gave up the ghost. The seller had it to my mother's assisted living suite in record time, and we thought we were home free.........not hardly! The simple on-line registration took hours and hours. Each time it was filled in with all the info, we came to the end and it bumped us back to square one. Finally, early on a Sunday morning, a real live human being at MSN talked me through it and we found the problem with a changed address. Mom is a stroke survivor; in fact, she had three more before she was able to use this new setup much. She's really boggled now---but, this unit was easy enough for her to use, which was the whole point anyway. She isn't able to use it to its capacity, but it gets her her email easily. Is it a computer? NO---I cannot imagine the trouble she could get in with a computer. I suggest WebTV to older people often. I am happy with this purchase.

obsolete product

This is mostly directed toward people who own and hopefully still have the previous msntv. After several years of having msntv, I thought I'd upgrade to msntv 2. BIG MISTAKE. What ever shortcomings the old msntv has it doesn't compare to this debacle they dare call an upgrade. They claim you can keep all your favs and email address, and email list, and all those other things associated with your account. Technically that's true, but when you go into your email and try to look at the jpeg, metropcs and whatever other pics people have sent you... NOPE you can't see them. They're blocked. A notice pops up with the incompatabilty of the "upgraded" msntv 2 and the pics you want to look at. And when you want to view those naughty MPGs you've saved in your favs...(you know who you are) Nope you can't see them either. They claim the video is too long and will take a long time to load. It gets to 10% downloaded then freezes. Freezes till you either unplug the unit or till a phoneline interuption. Plus the little pictures for immeadiate recognition of your favs is replaced with a light blue tinted msn butterfly. Here's another problem, I tried to order something from Amazon, halfway through the process my screen turned white and once again it froze up on me. How long? long enough to take a decent shower including lather, rinse, repeat. But it didn't resume. It stayed frozen. In fact Amazon didn't even have my info displayed. And if you think shutting the old msn off when it froze was an annoyance, I can't even begin to describe the nightmare involved with this hunk of oversized useless hardware. One final piece of info. If you switched over to a digital phone system and your old msn seems not to work anymore don't get rid of it. It can (For lack of a better word) be retrained to adapt to digital phone service. It may take a week or so, but it can be done.

i have had a webtv classic in my life for years and also a PC , so i have been on every level of the internet food chain from dial up to cable broadband. This item is not nearly as bad as people (usually disgruntled webtv old school diehards) say, The main quality of this is that is is now in highspeed, dial up webtv was just no good anymore and the way the net is you need broadband. This msn tv 2 also needs no firewall (which is what slows down and protects pc's) so i find that it is faster on the net than a 2005 era loaded computer , computers need way to much pampering and security to use the net, this thing is basically just plug and play. it does have some small shortcomings to nitpick about , but overall the speed and power and price point make this an excellent buy. no regrets at all in buying this to replace a webtv classic at all.

MSN is quiting service 9/30/13 otherwise a good system---I previously owned a MSN-1.--loved it--it worked great.Wha more can I say?

I have used webtv-msntv for the last 7 1/2 years. And just switiched to the msntv2 unit last month when my new msntv classic died after a year and a half. Sure at first wanted nothing to do with the msntv2 because I had heard of the problems people were having with it when it was first released.I am glad that I changed my mind.Right now I am using the dial connection which is still faster than it was with the other two units.I also like the e-mail set up better,among other things,Sure it still has growing pains but what doesn't!And the unit is updated, So if you are not a computer person.Why not give this unit a try As of January 4th 2009 after so many years of owning Webtv products I finally bought the new Macbook. If it had not been for owing the webtv/msntv 2 the transition would not have been so easy. There are things that I will continue to use the msntv2 for but the Macbook will be my main unit, They both are now connected to dsl.