One of the most apparent trends from this month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), was the proliferation of flat panel, internet-connected TVs. Nearly every major television manufacturer was demonstrating some sort of web-to-TV integration, including sets that offered Yahoo widgets, MySpace social networking, and Netflix built directly into the TV sets themselves. This isn't the "Web TV" of days past, but a whole new way to internet-enable the living room. This is the year of the "connected TV."
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This Isn't Your Parents' Web TV
Remember Web TV? It's still around, believe it or not, now rebranded as MSN TV. With a set-top box and keyboard, you can browse the web from the comfort of your couch. For whatever reason, it didn't take off. From personal experience at, after some initial oohs and aahs, our household quickly grew bored with our Web TV box. If you used the service, too, you probably felt the same.
Why didn't it work? Perhaps people didn't really want to use a keyboard in their living room. Or perhaps it just launched too soon. Its heyday was in the