WebTV

The WebTV (or MSN TV) was an device connected to a television that allows the customer to be connected to the Internet, primarily for web browsing and e-mail.  While WebTV does not allow as much functionality as a computer-based web browser, it is a low-cost alternative to a traditional computer connection to the Internet. On July 1, 2013, Microsoft send an email that the service will be shutting down on September 30, 2013. WebTV Networks was founded in July 1995 located in a building in  Palo Alto, California. After some months  the company was sold to Microsoft and nowadays is called MSN TV.

WebTV was launched on September 18, 1996,  with WebTV set-top boxes in stores from Sony and Philips. One of the downside of the first boxes was the very limited processing and memory resources. The first set-top boxes were using a 33.6 kbit/s dialup modem. The biggest problem was that the Web pages looked bad and ugly, some media formats didn't work at all, and using the remote control was problematic. One other problem was that the set-box containing strong cryptography and this limited the shipping of these boxes outside of US due to the export regulations.

Sales and Recover

April 1997, WebTV had only 56,000 subscribers, but the pace of subscriber growth accelerated after that. By April 1998 the company achieved about 325,000 subscribers and about 800,000 subscribers by May 1999. WebTV achieved profitability by Spring 1998, and grossed over US$1.3 billion in revenue through its first 8 years of operation.

Microsoft played a key role for the survival of the company. Web TV was not a failed product, but it was really close to fail.  The biggest problem especially at the beginning was the bad design and the unsupported media formats. 

RealNetworks RealPlayer

Installation wizard of Realplayer. You can't select
not to install the adware!

RealPlayer was introduced in 1995 as "RealAudio Player" and it was one of first players that supported online streaming.  For some time there was an extra paid "Plus" version, that included additional features. RealPlayer was popular because it was the only reliable plugin at that period that supported video streaming or audio streaming.

RealPlayer is notorious for its adware and spyware. The program has been heavily criticized for its  pop-up advertisements. If we summarize the reasons behind the small adoption these days we can list them:

• Replaced from other tools with less "spam", that support more audio and video formats. 
• Flash player is used mainly for video streaming now.
• Slow (mainly from the badware included). Application that provide similar functions free of charge or even open source replace the RealPlayer.
• Privacy issues: initial versions were sending back information about the songs listened.

Despite the low penetration in the market nowadays, it was the first free player that supported many video and audio formats. Furthermore, it was the first one that supported acceptable video streaming, when dial up connection was the common case. As of May 2015, the Real website states that RealPlayer has been replaced by RealTimes, a product that makes multimedia montages from users' photographs and videos, backed up and accessible via cloud storage.

Zip Drives

The options for transferring data between machines were limited in the early 1990s. The most common medium used was the 3.5-inch disc that could hold 1.44 megabytes of data. Tape drives and other specialty systems could transfer considerably more information, but they were expensive and focused as enterprise solution. They were rare among computer hobbyists. In 1994, however, Iomega released a new product called the Zip disk drive [1], marketing it as the next generation of removable media.

The Zip drive is a high capacity removable disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB. The format became the most popular of the super-floppy type products which filled a niche in the late 1990s portable storage market. However it was never popular enough to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disk nor could ever match the storage size available on rewritable CDs and later rewritable DVDs that introduced later.

Zip drives initially sold well after their introduction in 1994, owing to their low price and high, for the time, capacity.  Thus, backing up with Zip disks was very economical for home users. Moreover, some computer suppliers such as Dell and Apple included Iomega internal Zip drives with their machines. Zip drives also made significant advances in the graphic arts market, as a cheaper alternative to the Syquest cartridge hard disk system [2]. The price of additional cartridges swiftly dropped further over the next few years, as more companies began supplying them. Eventually, the suppliers included Fujifilm, Verbatim, Toshiba and Maxell. Epson and NEC also produced a licensed 100 MB drive model with its brand name.

Hardware Problems

Unfortunately, the Zip drive design was prone to hardware failure. The read heads of a Zip drive were extremely fragile and could become misaligned through rough usage or power failure, rendering them incapable of reading or writing coherent data. This would cause the heads to snap back and forth inside the drive repeatedly, creating a sound called the "click of death" by users [3]. In addition, a sufficiently damaged Zip disk could actually damage the read heads in a working drive, creating a chain reaction of failing hardware and media in any group where users shared equipment.

Decline

At the time of the Zip drive's introduction, it represented a cost-effective way to back-up and transfer large amounts of data. The development and widespread adoption of recordable CD drives, however, quickly reduced the market share for this type of hardware. Blank CDs could hold around 750 megabytes of data, cost less than a dollar each, and were not prone to the same type of mechanical failures that Zip disks were. The development of rewritable CDs further diminished the Zip drive's appeal, and recordable DVDs cemented optical media's domination of the removable disc market. Though Iomega sold tens of millions of Zip and Jaz drives that worked flawlessly, thousands of the drives died mysteriously, issuing a clicking noise as the drive head became misaligned and clipped the edge of the removable media, rendering any data on that disc permanently inaccessible.

Sales of Zip drives and disks declined steadily from 1999 to 2003.[5] Zip disks had a relatively high cost per megabyte compared to the falling costs of then-new CD-R and CD-RW discs. The growth of hard disk drives to multi-gigabyte capacity made backing up with Zip disks less economical. Furthermore, the advent of inexpensive recordable CD and DVD drives for computers, as well as USB flash drives, pushed the Zip drive out of the mainstream market. However, the advantages of magnetic media over optical media and flash memory, in terms of long-term file storage stability and high erase/rewrite cycles, still affords them a niche in the data storage arena. In such applications, Zip competes primarily with USB external hard drives and the Hi-MD version of Sony's MiniDisc, which stores up to 1 GB on a disk that is smaller and less expensive than a 100 MB Zip disk.

References

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death
[4] upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/ZipDiskNDrive_unitsales_1998to2003.svg