RCA RM2100 MSNTV Internet Receiver
Nice Idea, Poor Execution, Poor Support
I bought a new MSNTv (the RCA 2100) for my parents.  I was hoping to replace their computer which has become too much for them to manage, and they needed to downsize as well.  They also have an MSN dial up account and this allows them to use this account for MSNTv and not have to pay any additional monthly fee.  I called MSNTv before I bought this unit to ask if their &quot;@msn.com&quot; e-mail account could be transfered over to the &quot;@webtv.net&quot; domain and they said &quot;yes just call us when you hook it up&quot;.  Well this turned out to be a lie.  You can access your MSN.COM e-mail on your computer, but your new domain will be WebTV.Net and the two are separate.  Then it turns out that many SPAM bocking programs (including SPAMCop) block all WebTV.Net e-mail as SPAM.  Appearently the device lacks support for certain e-mail features which validate the e-mail origin and therefore it is thrown out (depending on how the e-mail admin handles SPAM).  So my very first test e-mail to my sister never went through, no error msg no nothing, just off into the ether.  Also, since MSNTv has its own list of incoming SPAM sites, it regularly blocks e-mail from some very popular domains, including 8 days where they blocked MSN.COM e-mails!  The unit is very slow, much slower than a regular computer over the same dial up line, and if you want to surf any web site other than the ones MSNTv picks for you, good luck, you will be there all night.  My Sister-in-law likes to send e-mails with pictures embedded in word documents.  Obviously this unit can't handle that, but it did not even strip the doc file and let the e-mail through, it just never showed up, no error no nothing.  So this unit has very unreliable e-mail capabilities, and is painfully slow at web surfing, and I ended up returning it for a refund.  Some time in the coming months a new MSNTv unit (the RCA4100) will be out that will work over broadband and have more support for e-mail that hopefully will fix someof these issues, until then I'd say forget this current product.