And if the future means TV and the Web are merging, it's a marriage that needs some work. The WebTV Network Plus service includes a DishPlayer 500 satellite receiver and set-top box from EchoStar Communications Corp. plus the WebTV online service from Microsoft. The installers arrived at the scheduled time. It took a little more than two hours for them to find the right spot on the roof for the satellite dish, which is about 20 inches in diameter, set it up, drill a hole through the outside wall and check it out. They set up the set-top box before they arrived, which knocked 30 to 40 minutes off the time I would have had to spend getting it going.
Help is never far away.
But it didn't take much squinting to realize that WebTV would present a challenge for my aging eyes. Typing on my desk chair while balancing the keyboard on my lap also was a new experience, as was adjusting to a keyboard about half the size of a standard one. I also had to readjust to a dialup connection for the Internet, having been spoiled by a cable modem at home and a high-speed connection at work. Even with a 56K modem, the Web on TV seemed to take forever to load pages. Several times, I couldn't even log on to the service.