WebTV Viewer In Action (VBox+Win98)
So I wanted to show off WebTV in action. This is an issue as virtualizers/emulators don't emulate TV tuners. Not only that, with the switch to digital here in the states, NTSC is virtually a dead format, so there wouldn't be nothing to show anyway. Also, WebTV downloaded it's TV listings from online servers that have long been shut down. Thus, there is nothing from online that could be used to build the WebTV MDB database.
However, because the MDB database used for WebTV is in the Access 97 format (Access 2000 opens it in read-only mode and saves it in the Access 2000 format, which WebTV can't read), it's possible to open the database and add our channels in. It's a bit time consuming as different databased have to be edited concurrently as they are all linked together. However, once one understands the database, it's possible to add your own channels.
One thing to note is that WebTV is actually a HTML viewer/browser geared towards showing TV listings while interfacing with your TV tuner. Thus, channels could be linked to HTML files. From there, one can embed a AVI or ASF video into a HTML file and have it play using WebTV once that channel is loaded.
To make the experience more authentic, I created a video that was originally in the 1080P 60FPS format and converted it to a ISO DVD video format using DVD Flick. From there, I burned the video to a DVD-R and played it on a Toshiba SD-4000 DVD Player connected to a EasierCap USB RCA capture device that is connected to my PC with OBS studio capturing the video with all of it's NTSC interlacing artifacts! Thus, it is actually like watching 90's-like TV, like how WebTV users would have watched back in the day. Also shown is the NASA STS-98 launch and me playing one of those TV Golf consoles that was plugged into the capture device as well and recorded using OBS.
VirtualBox is virtualizing a multimedia PC with a single-core processor, 96MB's of RAM, and a VESA Compatible display adapter. Windows is running at the screen resolution of 1024 by 768, 32-bit depth. A Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 is installed for audio support while an AMD PCnet-FAST III NIC is installed for networking support. Windows 98SE is installed.