RCA/MSN TV 2 Internet and Media Player
WebTV Veteran who actually LIKES MSN TV2
I'll start off by saying,yes, I am a WebTV veteran. I have owned and operated a Plus unit for the last 7 years or so. That said, I'll jump right into the supposed CONS of this unit: <br /> <br />1. Pagebuilder/Scrapbook is history. Get over it. Pagebuilder sucked big time. I never used it except as a quick and dirty way to give scrapbook images a temporary web address so I could transload them to a REAL website, like Geocities, which worked just fine with my old Plus and is even easier to use on my new MSN TV2. The new unit is capable of using USB flash drives or card readers - we're talking hundreds of megabytes worth of photos at your fingertips vs the measly 2-12MB you used to get from Pagebuilder/Scrapbook. Plus, if someone e-mails you a photo, you can actually attach that photo to another e-mail you send or upload it to your own website or group. (I use Geocities and Yahoo! Groups all the time).  <br /> <br />2. No more screencaps, picture in picture, or TV listings. Boo Hoo. The screencaps were lousy, anyone who actually wants picture in picture probably already has that option built into their TV and there are sooooo many websites where you can get \\"personalized\\" tv listings that are faster and more reliable than my old Plus unit's listings which half the time didn't automatically update anyway. I suppose, if you ONLY have a MSN TV2 unit and no computer or digital camera, losing the grainy screencaps means you're losing the only way to upload your own content to the web - well, guess what? You can get a cheap digital camera for under $50 these days, and a not too shabby one for just under $100. Splurge a little - you can actually take the camera outside the house with you! <br /> <br />3. Web pages display weird and it's not faster than the old unit. What? Are you kidding me? On my old Plus unit, everyday I was finding that a page that I visited many times in the past had suddenly become unviewable. eBay was gone. Yahoo Mail was a nightmare. Forget trying tolog on to a movie or network TV homepage. With the Internet Explorer 6 and Flash 6 upgrade on the new unit I can actually browse the web again! I especially like the \\"resize\\" page feature that lets you expand the webpage back to its original width (meaning a little more scrolling both side to side and up and down) making some otherwise illegible sites readable again. Not faster? I've never used anything but dial-up, so I can't even begin to imagine the broadband version of this new unit, but my dialup experience has been above and beyond. Pages load waaaay faster. The increased memory must help out there. And, oh yeah, the lack of a hard drive makes this unit so quiet I almost forget it's there. If I do get stuck on a non-webtv friendly page, it takes just seconds to reboot and relogon vs the tens of minutes I had to wait for my old Plus unit shut down and reinitialize. Here's something else to think about: I watch video clips on Yahoo! Movies and full music videos on Launch.com with my MSN TV2 - over dialup! (yeah, it's the grainy 56k videos - but they play straight through, no pausing, no skipping, no sound out of sync with the video, I was never able to do that with my PC!) <br /> <br />4. No web eye, the keyboard and everything is different. I guess some people will never be able to change. They must be surfing the web on a black and white tv with actual knobs and no remote control, listening to their music on old record players. Of course everything is different. The web eye? I was concerned about that too - until I realized I could lay my new keyboard on the floor and it would still work with the MSN TV unit way up on top of the entertainment center - it must have a massively wide IR beam. The only way I can't type something in is if I'm completely turned around and not facing my tv at all. Dropped letters? You people must be speed demons - I used to enter data for a living, I still type over 49 words a minute on a slow day and I haven't had any problems.  <br/> <br />All in all, the only \\"Con\\" I've found so far with this unit is that the new remote will only control RCA/Proscan tv's and the \\"onscreen\\" keyboard is history. I used to love laying back on the couch and casually surfing one handed with just the remote controlling everything. Oh, well. A small price to pay after all. Damn MSN!! I guess I should mention chat (even though I hardly ever use it). The new unit will NOT (as of this review) chat over IRC networks or allow you to create your own chatrooms - you're limited to MSN chat. Oh the horror! So, if you're a chat junkie, this would probably be a BIG con for you. For me, I couldn't care less. I'm just tickled pink that my MSN TV2 unit can read videos/MP3's/photos off my USB card reader. That more than makes up for the sucky remote and lack of cool chat. I can pop a card full of pictures into the reader and upload new pics to my Friendster page, or just e-mail them to family/friends. I can take the memory card from my MP3 player and pop it in there and listen to my music over my surround system in the living room. Or I can pull videos off my aging PC and save them to a memory card to be played back full screen on my living room TV - no more wasting time burning video CD's. It all works so well, I'm half tempted to get a broadband connection and wireless network so I can surf faster and use my MSN TV unit to view/listen to files stored on my PC. But only half tempted. The whole reason I've always loved WebTV/MSN TV so much, despite the fact that I DO have a PC is that my MSN TV unit doesn't get viruses, adware, malware, etc. My PC crashes everytime I take it online anymore. It's just not worth it. But I can surf still surf in peace from the comfort my living room couch on my MSN TV2! This whole review, by the by, was written on my new MSN TV2.