WebTV Help
New to WebTV, need help learning what WebTV can do? This page can help. When I first signed up with WebTV 9 months ago, I was already on the internet but WebTV was akward to use. Learning what keys on the keyboard did what, and what the WebTV could do. Some of the things about WebTV can be tricky so I made this page to help people out who are having problems, or just want more information.
What WebTV can do
WebTV gets upgrades every few months to keep WebTV up to speed with the ever changing world of the internet. These upgrades are free of charge and are automatic. If a upgrade is released it will let you know when you sign on and ask if you want to download it now or later. My suggestion is you download it as soon as you see it. Since there are a lot of WebTV subscribers, WebTV releases the upgrades in groups at a time a certain times of the day. So you can not be on the WebTV and receive the upgrade. So if you decided to download the upgrade later you might not be able to the next few times you sign on. For a list of what WebTV can handle so far, Click here.
Around Town
Around Town is a section on WebTV that gives you the weather for your area (not always working), white pages, yellow pages, and other sites dealing with local information. You can view information on your city or any other city in the US you want. You can get to this section by clicking on the blue bar that says "Around" and your city name which is on the "home" page. You can also get to this section by clicking on community on the sidebar on the "home" page.
Chat
In this section you can chat in IRC rooms or talk city IRC rooms. For more information about this check out my IRC help page by clicking here. You can get to Chat by clicking on community on the "home" page.
Discuss (Newsgroups)
WebTV has a section called Discuss which is under community on the "home" page. Here you can go to newsgroups that each discuss certain topcis. There are thousands of newsgroups today and more come all the time. There are certain newsgroups that are WebTV only, these news groups are webtv.users and any of the alt.discuss newsgroups. webtv.users is a moderated newsgroup where you can get answers for your WebTV related questions. If you know of a newsgroup name that you want to go to, follow these steps: First press "goto", then delete the http:// part, next type news:, and finally add the group you want. Example news:webtv.users
Explore
Explore is a section of WebTV that contains a lot of different sites in different sections like news, sports, and more. Each section contains sites about the section you are in.
Favorites
Favorites is a section on WebTV where you can bookmark up to 600 sites in folders. You can have 32 favorites per folder. When you see a site that you know you are going to go back to or just want to save, press save and a box will come up asking you what folder you want to save the site to. Click click the box next to the folder. In each folder you can view the site names or you can view small pictures of the page you saved with the name.
Home (Web Home)
Home is where you start on the WebTV classic network. This is called Web Home on the WebTV Plus network.
Mail
This is where you can send email to anyone on WebTV and anyone on the internet with a email address. You write a email, read a email, save a email and more. If you click on settings on the sidebar and are on the main account you will see a option called message alert. You can set a time that WebTV will power on, connect, check for mail, sometimes download a video ad, and power off. Your red light it pop on if you have mail.
Search
Here you can search for something on the internet using the Excite search engine. Just click on Search on your keyboard or "home" page and type in what you are looking for.
Settings
Under settings on the "home" page are options that you can use to customize WebTV. Here you can choose if you want background music while you are on the web, choose to add or remove users on your account (main accout only), among other things.
Swtich Users
If you have more than one user name on your WebTV (you can 6, your main account and 5 others) you will see "Swtich Users" on the sidebar of the "home" page. This will allow you to change to a different user without having to disconnect.
TV Home (WebTV Plus Only)
This is where you start on the WebTV Plus network, here you can watch TV or choose Web Home to start to surf the Web.
Using WebTV
You can find this under the "Home" page on the sidebar. Under Using WebTV you can find links for Club WebTV (webtv newsletter), Discuss (webtv.users newsgroup), printing help, instructions, and if you are on the Plus a link for WebTV-MCI (can be found in settings using a WebTV Classic).