"WebTV for Dreamcast" Awareness Thread

[WedgeStratos]

I will say that, given the Dreamcast scene has also thoroughly documented many a seemingly benign part of the Dreamcast's history, be it the core aspects of the Katana devkit, a part of the Dreamcast that Sega could very well litigate over which is no different from this WebTV situation, or DreamArena 3.0, which would have been very similar in the sense of it using custom HTML tags written for DreamKey, it would be unfair not to explore this.

I'm in the same community as this fellow, and my perspective is fairly similar. There is either a dancing fear, selfish control, or general mistrust from the scene kids who have at least a semblance of knowledge on WebTV that they just don't wish to share, which is very frustrating. WebTV itself isn't restrained to the Dreamcast. If you explore MattMan69's website, where he has documented his escapades as a hacker on the service, you'll see that he and his compatriot have created

• A self-hostable server emulator that, as mentioned in OP's post, is written in Perl, and which mimics the most basic elements that work on WebTV and MSN TV hardware
• A modified version of the WebTV Viewer program used by WebTV Network Inc. employees to test and develop the software, which is set to connect to that local server emulator
• Custom builds of WebTV and MSN TV software for real WebTV/MSN TV set top boxes that, you guessed it, connect to the server emulator
• A custom build of "Microsoft WebTV Connection Kit" for the Sega Dreamcast, you get my point

and finally

• A modified DreamPi image that enables the WebTV/MSN TV set top boxes, or "Microsoft WebTV Connection Kit", to connect to, again, that self-hostable server emulator.

So if you're wondering, yes, the existing "Microsoft WebTV Connection Kit" software can be placed into your Dreamcast, you can download and run this server emulator on your own PC, extract and flash this DreamPi image to your Raspberry Pi, and by following the rule of a bash script for the Pi, your copy of "Microsoft WebTV Connection Kit" will connect to your locally hosted server emulator. The software works today already... In its most basic form. It can't connect to the internet because there's no proxy software included in the server emulator. It doesn't have any inclusions for that. The most it can do is, if you have a WebTV set top box, you can run MAME or Doom on it using the server emulator. None of that is possible with "Microsoft WebTV Connection Kit" on Dreamcast, so it is a bit disheartening.

But most of WebTV is similar to what the original Dreamcast website would have been, with community boards, news, and naturally, the ability to surf the web like we have with PlanetWeb, Dreamkey or Dream Passport.

It's the matter that there's a LOT more about WebTV than we currently know, and we're just trying to get closer. Assistance with locating discussions of WebTV in the Japanese region (such as from the official Dreamcast magazine) and translating them can teach us a lot about the decision, the confidence Microsoft had, and maybe will give us insight on things we weren't aware of. This was an alternative option to getting your Dreamcast online in Japan, the only other choice was to use Dream Passport and Dricas.

[wtv-411]

It can't connect to the internet because there's no proxy software included in the server emulator. It doesn't have any inclusions for that.

Actually, the server emulator in its current incarnation does support web browsing. It just that it makes it so WebTV uses an outside server to query websites through, which is linked to the distributor (MattMan69)'s own fully-fledged WebTV server. In other words, the main feature of WebTV on that server emulator is reliant on whether some hacker's computer has those services running or not.

Also I personally agree with researching WebTV DC from the Japanese-speaking internet as we might be able to gather more information from the country of origin. Sadly I nor anyone else currently interested in this know a lick of Japanese (maybe save for a few basic words), so right now that isn't exactly an option. Definitely something that should be considered though.

[-drez01-]

I have been messing around with mattmans new release (2021) of webtv for dc. I have a custom version working with some local webpages. I will be including it in a release i’ve been working on for the past 6 months. Mattmans release includes a custom dreampi image for connecting to his server. It would be great if the dns redirects was included in a new update of dreampi. Would make a translation project more feasible, tho not likely as ALOT of the characters are images for buttons. Very interesting stuff tho! Runs very well, not as fast as dreampassport or dreamkey but almost on par with planetweb

[wtv-411]

I think we can do better than rely on the many crappy hacks and releases MattMan has dished out in the past few years. I personally believe Matt's Dreamcast image is too sloppy to simply lean on and by itself isn't pretty useful, and the forced branding change from WebTV to his own HackTV brand is very eh to me. Also please elaborate on what you mean by server. Last time I checked, his DreamPi image does have an iptables script but it doesn't configure the Pi to reroutes appropriate requests to his full server, if that's what you're talking about. Most we can use right now is the server emulator, which I definitely want to avoid people seeing as something worth using and extending upon. Like I said in the OP, it's just underwhelming, crappy, and doesn't even implement the protocol correctly at times. Everything right now is too premature to simply rely on what MattMan has given us and accept that as the fate of WebTV. He doesn't even know much about the service to really offer much technical info on it, and his fellow scene members don't bother giving out accurate information themselves. The most that's been done in terms of accurate documentation and preservation of WebTV is the dedicated wiki I've had up for a while.

[-drez01-]

Ah I see, I haven’t tried to get online with it yet. Its been on the back burner for me. I like where you are going with this tho as I agree with you on the branding change. The webtv splash screen was removed with the latest version I think to speed up the boot sequence... Anyways if you need any help I will try to dig into this a bit deeper, I have the weekend off and will try to find another sd card. Would be good to know what we are working with for the time being

[mrneo240]

I almost have a complete webtv dreamcast collection.

[-drez01-]

I have 2, how many are there?

[mrneo240]

3!

Regular has thin and thick manual

Then there's the 128bit version.

[-drez01-]

Oh snap I was unaware of the manual variations. Thanks

[wtv-411]

I have a 128-bit SSL copy with the "thin" manual. Guess that makes the total amount of prints to be 4. Only wish there was substantial evidence to back that up on the Sega Retro article beforehand lol.

Anyway, addressing what drez said after my last reply, yeah, there's a lot to figure out and properly salvage (hopefully) from the WebTV service both in terms of content and protocols. Same goes with looking deep into the software (in this case, the WebTV Dreamcast software) if there's any interest in that. There's actually a fair bit going on with the WebTV service other than "client requests web paths from server with fancy HTTP headers tacked on". A few examples are a custom format used to serve a WebTV user's favorite folders through the main WTVP protocol, supposed "ani" parameters sent with service redirects when a new client (Dreamcast/dedicated box) registers, a supposed "Mail Notify" protocol that's only known to have apparently sent e-mail notifications to live WebTV clients but not whether it was used to communicate with clients, proprietary challenge/response used when logging in via the "headwaiter" server, and probably more stuff going on that hasn't been documented yet. The challenge/response has since been documented this year after getting sample code from a willing WebTV scene member (thank god I can understand Python), but the rest probably won't be documented, at least for some time, due to the nature of how often WebTV information even gets shared online and the amount of WebTV scene people who aid in its long-running habit of gatekeeping this stuff. On my end, I've been finding and contacting as many WebTV Networks staff (American, though) as I can reach out to in hopes they can share some information on the service, protocols, or anything else. I only ever successfully got back from two people who didn't exactly have the holy grail of information or content, but did at least share some insight on the U.S. network infrastructure that I've since added to my wiki. IDK if anyone here would be willing to do the same thing I'm doing, but I'm open to anyone taking on the task.