About K. Lawrence Expertise I have expertise in making webtv email signatures as well as website design. I am patient and specific with "newbies" to the webber experience!
I am on a Sony Plus and am able to answer questions regarding the video capture and audio capture features of the plus.
Experience I have three websites. One is a very large collection of camel clipart and the other two are just fun sites where I have used some creativity to have a good time. I have gotten very good with html and table commands.
Question My name is Aaron Gabel and I work for a retirement/nursing home in the IT dept. Part of my responsibilities is assisting residents with computer related questions/problems. One of our residents, Carol Bartlett, subscribes to WebTV. Carol asked me last week about a problem she was having accessing links in an e-mail she receives from the New York Times containing daily headlines. When she clicks on any of the links she gets the message: "The publisher auth.nytimes.com did not respond to your request for info." She said that up until a couple of weeks ago this hadn't been a problem.
I thought at first it was something contained in the e-mail so I had her forward it to me, but when I opened the e-mail I was able to open any link listed. I then went to her WebTV and went to the New York Times website, nytimes.com. The home page came up but when I clicked on any links on the page I got the same error message I mentioned above. Finally I went down to my PC and went to the New York Times website and was able to open it and go to any link on the page. The only other thing I can think it would be is either they have changed something on the NY Times website that isn't user friendly to WebTV users or it's something with Carol's WebTV.
I was wondering if you might be able to help me figure out what is the cause of this problem and if there is any way it can be fixed. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciate.
Here is some information that I was able to obtain Carol's account information and from her WebTV appliance.
WebTV Plus Mod# INT-W250
Serial # 8074566
Answer I went to the nytimes website. It took forever to load. It is definately NOT webtv friendly.
I have the same unit as your friend.
Webtv uses an old MSN browser version. It's about IE 5.0 or so...in comparison most computer browsers are IE 9.0 or so, AOL is, MSN is, not sure about Netscape...and personally, on my computer I use Mozilla Firefox.
Unfortunately Webtv is stuck with what they give you.
The links on the left side of the nytimes website worked for me. Trying to click on any of the main articles was futile, altho they did try to load. I got a message telling me that I was using an old outdated browser. Then it went to a blank screen and when I backed out it took me back a page or two...very frustrating.
My opinion on what happened...they updated thier browser requirements and left Webtv farther behind. Webtv does support Java Script, but not well, and does not support Java.
The webtv unit will also time out if the link fails to load after a few minutes, and you will get the "failure to respond" popup...there is also the possibility that the unit is dropping the connection. My computer is on dial up for now and drops the connection all the time.
Bottom line, I dont think it's her unit. It's her outdated browser and nothing can be done about it.
I wish I could be more help, but what you are describing is exactly why so many are leaving webtv for computer.
