Philips and Sony took a license on 'WebTV' in USA in 1995. WebTV was a small company that was actually set up in 1995. Philips released the WebTV settopbox in the USA between 1995-1997. To us it is not really clear when it was introduced. It is remarkable that this product was released as a two-brand product, Iǘe never seen Philips products that had both Philips AND Magnavox printed on it. In 1997, WebTV was bought by Microsoft and they renamed it at a later point to MSN-TV. This service was active until early 2004. Interesting that at the time of launch, Philips was betting on two horses: Web-i via CD-i and WebTV as a seperate settopbox. Both were released eventually.
[Thanks, contribution by Steve Murphy]