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(....continued) Okay, when you turn on the NTV-2500, you get the "TV Home" page with the TV broadcast picture in the middle of the screen and a sidebar menu with selections for "Web," "Mail," "Call," "DVD," and "Setup." Click one of those selections and you go to either the web, email, Internet Picture Phone, DVD, or set-up.

SurfReady NTV-2500 Home Page

The cursor keys on the remote control as well as on the keyboard will let you move around the screen. If you move the cursor to the TV broadcast portion of the display, you can click on the broadcast to go to full-screen TV mode. You can also click on the "TV" button on the remote or on the keyboard to go between "TV Home" and full-screen TV. With the TV, you would of course use the channel up and down buttons to change the channel.

Click the "Recent" button on the remote and you will see six miniature pictures of the six channels you were watching. You can also set up your favorite TV channels in "TV Favorites" by clicking "Favs" on the remote. "TV Favorites" on the NTV-2500 is somewhat similar to what you have with WebTV Plus except the menu of channels is on the left side of the screen on the NTV-2500. On the WebTV Plus, the channel would change as you move through each channel on the menu. On the NTV-2500, you just move a mouse pointer to the channel number and then click that number to change the channel.

The DVD player is what I really like with the NTV-2500. If you are familar with DVD players, controlling the DVD player on the NTV-2500 is not too different. If you are familiar with VCR machines but not with DVD players, the controls are also not too different. You can play, stop, pause, fast forward, or reverse the DVD movie. And you can skip ahead through different sections of the movie. You can either use the button controls on the handheld remote control, or you can use the pop-up menubar to control the DVD. Since I was playing with a NTV-2500 with an early version of the its software, I wasn't able to see it do slow motion. I really liked watching DVD movies with the NTV-2500.

SurfReady NTV-2500 Playing
DVD Movie with onscreen menu

I was also able to play, sing along, and watch karaoke VCD discs. If you have any VCD movie discs, or if you want to order VCD movies via the internet, you can play those also on the NTV-2500. Outside of the U.S., and particularly in Asia, there are a lot of the popular movies available on VCD -- and many of these are the same movies you would find in the U.S. on videotape and DVD. I was able to play regular music CDs, but I wasn't able to get music CD-G discs to show text on the screen while the music was playing. Anyways, unless the music industry begins to mass produce cheap DVDs with interactive karaoke music, VCD currently provides the better viewing experience for singing karaoke music. Karaoke is popular as can be seen in TV shows such as MTV's Say What? Karaoke and Dick Clark's Your Big Break showing everyday people singing popular songs (also, need to mention The WB TV network's "Angel" show ocassionally features a karaoke lounge every few episodes).

Playing Karaoke Music (music lyrics at bottom
of screen, and onscreen menu turned on )

You would use the NTV-2500's microphone to sing along with the karaoke music. There are controls above the microphone jacks to control the volume of your singing. And if there is anyone around who can't stand the sound of your singing, you can plug in your headphones, turn down the sound on the TV, and turn up the volume on the headphones using the control above the headphone jack.

The Internet Picture Phone is great for making voice calls over the internet. With the digital camera that is included with the NTV-2500, you can send still pictures to the person you are talking to via the Internet Picture Phone. You would use the microphone to talk and you would hear the other person over the TV (or you can use the stereo headphones). The sound quality is good without any stuttering. If you want to talk to someone, you would click "Call" and go to your "Buddy List" of people you can talk to. If you don't have anyone in the "Buddy List," you can go to the Voxware phone directory or the Neon Technology phone directory to find someone to talk to. You click on someone's name and see if they answer.

By playing with this internet telephone with the still picture capability, I can understand why part of video phone etiquette requires asking if other person is willing to send a picture. For instance, when you call someone unannounced, well, the other person may be having a "bad hair" day and may not want you to see them. Some say email, chat, and instant messaging are killer apps for the internet. As internet-based two-way communications migrates to the TV set, some may probably say internet telephony with pictures or video may be a killer app for interactive TV.

Internet Picture Phone in Action

The email capability on the NTV-2500 uses the Pop3 email standard. If you are using your own ISP with the NTV-2500, you would have to put in your own pop3 and smtp settings along with your email user name and password. The email works well and is readable on the TV screen. You can attach recorded audio messages to your email using the microphone. And you can attach video pictures to your email using the digital camera. If you are a PC user who is used to regular text email, email with the NTV-2500 can be different since you can use the microphone and the digital camera to send pictures and voice audio. Since we're talking about TV, people do want to see pictures and hear audio. Other set-top boxes may have similar capabilities, but the NTV-2500 actually provides you with the digital camera and the microphone so you can send email with voice messages and pictures as soon as you set up the set-top box. Of course, you can also send plain text email messages without the pictures or the audio.

Playing a voice message
attached to an email message

As for surfing the internet, you have the basic surfing capabilities you would expect. When you click "Web" on the TV Home page or on the remote control, you go to the "SurfReady Online" home page on the internet. Unlike other set-top boxes which may squeeze the webpage to horizontally fit the TV screen, the browser on the NTV-2500 let's you horizontally scroll beyond the right side of the screen (and back to get to the left side of the webpage) as well as being able to scroll up and down. So if you go to a webpage that was designed for a PC, you can scroll horizontally to see the whole webpage in pretty much the way that it was intended to be formatted. There is also a magnifier if the text or a graphic on the webpage is too small to see on the TV screen.

The NTV-2500 works like the WebTV in maneuvering around a webpage by using the cursor arrow buttons to move a highlight box from link to link going up and down or from side to side throughout a webpage. And if you want to click a link that the highlight box is on, just press the enter button on the remote. For fast scrolling up and down a page, you can use the scroll up and down buttons.

SurfReady NTV-2500 let's you
save your favorite webpages

If you want to go to a specific webpage, you would click the "Go to" button on the keyboard and type in the URL address. If you want to go back a page or forward a page, you press the "Back" or "Forward" keys on the keyboard (there is no "Forward" button on the handheld remote control). You can also save website addresses as "Favorite Websites" by pressing the "Favs" button on the remote. And if you want to look at the past several webpages you visited, you can press the "Recent" button on the remote.

While surfing the web, you can click the "TV" button on the remote to get the TV picture-in-picture. You can click the "Display" button on the remote to move the TV PIP from right to left, or up or down, to put the TV PIP in any corner of the TV screen.

Surfing the internet while watching
TV with onscreen Picture-In-Picture

There is a menubar that pops up from the bottom of the screen -- just press the menubar button on the remote control. You can change the size of the fonts on the webpage. You can also print the webpage, or send the URL website address to someone via email, and you can find text on the webpage you are looking at. For printing, you can use Epson Stylus, HP Deskjet, and Canon BJC printers. When you want to exit from the web, you pull up the menubar, click exit, and you'll go to the TV Home page. Surfing the internet is relatively straightforward and easy to do with the NTV-2500.

There is currently no EPG with the NTV-2500, but the folks at Neon Technology say they are closer to setting up the capability for watching streaming Video-On-Demand (VOD) movies. There is a blank in the set-up section for "VOD Home." Of course, you would need a high-speed broadband cable or DSL connection for VOD. Don't expect enhanced TV capabilities such as clickable links showing up during TV shows as you would get with WebTV Plus or AOLTV. Instead, for the NTV-2500, you should expect to play DVD movies, play karaoke music, make internet picture telephone calls and send picture/voice email using the INCLUDED digital camera and microphone, and be able to use your own ISP.

The NTV-2500 is currently only available online for sale at the Neon Technology website. The cost of this set-top box is $599. It may cost a little more than buying another set-top box, but the Neon Technology folks would most likely tell you that it may cost even more for the consumer to buy separate individual components to get the same capabilities found in the NTV-2500 all-in-one set-top box. Also, if you want to use your own current internet connection, then this high-quality "SurfReady" set-top box with DVD, karaoke, internet telephony, digital camera, microphone, internet surfing, and email capability may be worth the $599 price tag.

I like this SurfReady NTV-2500 set-top box. The folks at Neon Technology have been wondering why I've been playing with this box for so long. I've been playing with this box because I am hooked on it. I could probably do internet surfing anywhere using any device, but the NTV-2500 let's me watch DVD movies, play karaoke, and provides a quality internet communications experience with the internet telephony and the picture-audio email. The NTV-2500 is one set-top box to check out and to watch.

Neon Technology is located at http://www.neontech.com.

Happy Set-Top Surfing!
Ruel