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By Ken White
Review-Journal
For the noncomputer-literate, the Internet is intimidating.
There's the cost of a personal computer for starters. Add to that a nervous breakdown when confronted with actually using the thing, and you have a large part of the American population that doesn't have access to the information superhighway.
But WebTV Networks Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company, has a service on the market that enables even those who can't program a VCR the ability to surf the Web.
The WebTV device, about the size of a VCR, allows Internet access through your television set and a phone line. Philips Magnavox and Sony manufacture the boxes; WebTV is the Internet service provider.
"Pretty much everything you can get on your computer you can do on here, except downloading (information)," says Randy Vanderpool, manager of The Good Guys at the WOW Multimedia Superstore, 4580 W. Sahara Ave.
And downloading capability is only a few months away.
The device, which hit stores in October 1996, can be operated with a remote control, plus wireless keyboards are on the market.
The WebTV box goes for $329.99 (both manufacturers). The keyboard is an additional $69 from Philips Magnavox; $79 from Sony.
New WebTV boxes due out next month will have printer adapters, so information can be printed out the same as on a computer.
Even without printer capability, WebTV has sold well, Vanderpool says. "We've sold an amazing amount of these units because a lot of people don't necessarily need to print the information."
No national or local sales figures are available, but Vanderpool says consumer response to the device has been good.
The service also has up to four e-mail boxes with separate access codes. E-mail messages can be typed in using the remote control or the keyboard. The keyboard is much easier.
Navigating the Internet is accomplished via the standard search engines used on computers -- Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. -- with the remote or keyboard.
The Sony box comes with a 400-page Internet guide to websites. With the guide, the user can utilize the "jump code" feature -- inputting code numbers and hitting the jump button -- to go straight to a website.
There's also the ability to compile a list of favorite sites, just like on computers.
Unlimited Web access comes at a $19.95 cost, the same as America Online. There are no hourly fees. To connect to the service, buyers have to dial up WebTV on the phone and the company does the rest.
"Predominantly we've seen that buyers have been people who don't have a computer that still want access to the information the Web provides," Vanderpool says. "So this is a low-cost alternative to purchasing a computer."
For parents who are worried about their children having access to X-rated websites, there's also a kid-proof feature that blocks specific sites. The user can restrict access to children-approved sites only.
The box also warns you if you have an incoming call -- used with the phone company's call-waiting feature. When you hang up the phone, you can go back to where you were on the Web, without disconnecting from the service and having to start over.
WebTV has good graphics and it is somewhat faster than most computers, but the image quality is that of a television, not that of higher-resolution computer monitors.
That can be a drawback -- images don't have quite the same detail.
But televisions do have larger screen sizes than computers, and with the advent of high-definition television next year, image quality will no longer be a problem.
Critics of the device already have weighed in with their verdicts. In an opinion piece in Web Week, writer and expert Robert Hertzberg doubts the premise will take off in a big way because television viewers expect "programs," which the Web does not provide.
"The Web as a whole has no programming to speak of, and the expectation that more than a tiny minority of consumers may be willing to look beyond that deficiency seems naive to me," Hertzberg wrote in the Dec. 2, 1996 issue. "There seems to be a real disconnect between the passivity of the television experience (a pastime many people think of as `vegging out') and the interactive nature of being on the Internet."
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