WebTV and Internet Relay Chat
By Ngan Bui (Ariell) and Joseph Lo (Jolo), with help from FraN2k and ExPeaches
last updated 4/16/98
The original version of this page is at <http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/misc/webtv.html>
WebTV opened the world of the
Internet to many people through an inexpensive computer that uses
your existing TV. While WebTV is generally adequate for web browsing
and email, it's harder to do more complicated things, and you can't
take advantage of specialized programs designed for those tasks. For
example, while you can use WebTV to chat, you must go through
their web interface. Compared to using a chat "client"
program on a PC, WebTV provides extremely limited access to chat
networks and very few commands. Imagine if you could only watch
movies on video - not every movie comes to video, and even then you
have to wait half a year before it's released, and watch it on a
much smaller screen without any of the exciting digital sound
effects. The same is true with chatting via WebTV. We therefore
developed this chat guide specifically for WebTV customers so you
can make the best use of your service.
Contents
- Getting started
- Networks And Servers
- Commands for WebTV Chat
- Limitations of WebTV
- Finding More Help
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) allows you to communicate live with people from all over the world. It consists of many separate networks of IRC servers, machines that allow users to connect to IRC. The largest nets are EFnet, Undernet, IRCnet, and DALnet.
On IRC, people know you by a nickname. At the present time,
you will always have the same name as your username. However, on WebTV,
you can create up to five secondary users and use any of them to chat on the Internet.
Group conversations occur on the thousands of channels on each network. Channels can be open to everyone or only to friends. For a list of channels, see #IRChelp's channel listing page. Channels are dynamic because anyone can create a new channel, and a channel disappears when the last person on it leaves.
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By default WebTV users can chat on Talk City, one of the largest
web-based chat servers. These servers are like the tip of the iceberg
compared to the much larger and more exciting IRC networks.
To reach other IRC networks, you need to know the address of a
server on that network, the port number, and the channel name. You may not be able to access all networks or servers due to restrictions placed on each server to limit the kind of people who can connect. After
you have this information, do the following:
- Return to the Home page
- Select Community
- Select Chat
- Select Go to
- Enter the following:
- server address (something like irc.whatever.com)
- port number (typically 6667, or you can try 6660-6667)
- the channel name (such as #IRChelp)
- Select Connect
Note that all channels names begin with a # symbol, but using the Go to feature you can optionally type the # or not (such as #IRChelp or IRChelp). You do not type the # when using the /join command mentioned below.
See the list of servers and networks for some suggestions.
Once you have connected successfully, you may talk by just typing into the text field at the bottom of the chat
screen. Then choose Send (or hit the Return key on your keyboard). See the next section for specific commands you can also type.
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Each command begins with a slash character (/) and you just type them into the same text field at the bottom of the chat screen.
- /join coolness
- Command to join the existing channel #coolness. Note with this command, you do not enter the # before the channel name. If the channel did not exist before, by joining it you will create it and also have ops on that channel. You can only be on one channel at a time.
- /who
- This gives you the nicknames of people in the current channel only, with some information about them.
- Hello everybody!
- Once you join a channel, you can speak to everybody on the channel
by typing any line without a leading slash character. Everybody else
will see "your_nick> Hello everybody!"
- /me is a pink bunny.
- Everybody in the channel sees "* your_nick is a pink
bunny." This is called an action.
- /whois jack
- You get some information about that jack, such as "jack is
jk1@some.host.name." If jack is also a WebTV user, the answer will not include the hostname, just whether or not he is on-line at the moment.
- /msg jack text
- Sends a private message to jack only. This is sometimes called "whispering" since nobody else can hear you except jack.
- /topic Dalmatians are spotted.
- Sets the channel topic to "Dalmatians are spotted." if you
are a channel op or if the channel mode is not +t (where only channel
ops can change the topic).
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In addition to the commands described in the previous section, you also
have the option of making a private channel. When you create a new
channel, check off the option to create a private, unlisted channel.
Unfortunately that's about all you can do with WebTV. Below we
will list just some of the many things you cannot do. There's
no way around this unless WebTV chooses to improve their software,
or unless you get a "real" personal computer which would
allow you to run a "real" IRC client program (such as mIRC for Windows or Ircle for Macintosh).
- Channels
- You cannot be on more than one channel at a time. You
cannot exercise the powers of a channel operator, except you
can change the topic in a channel with mode +t. WebTV's program
doesn't have the commands for all the other things that ops normally can
do, such as change channel modes (make it a secret, invite only, etc),
grant or remove other people's ops, kick and ban abusive users, etc.
- Colors, Fonts, and Sounds
- You cannot change text color, size, font, etc., while
chatting on WebTV. You cannot play sounds, nor can you hear
sounds played by others.
- File Transfers
- You cannot use DCC (Direct Client Communication) to send or r