Hardware Models/DishPlayer

The DishPlayer 7100 manufactured by EchoStar, is the first of the two clients in the DishPlayer series 1st introduced in 1999, It serves two purposes: To connect to WebTV (and later MSNTV branded) services and browse the web, and to use as a DVR to record TV.

It is its own type of set top box, a Dish tuner. Similar to a WebTV Plus box, it contains an IDE hard drive and a TV Tuner. The HDD contains 8.6 GB of storage space, necessary for a DVR.

Technical Specifications

• RM5230 CPU clocked at 167 MHz
• V.90 softmodem
• 16 MB RAM
• 4 MB ROM
• 8.6 GB HDD
• WebTV Smart Card slot (front)
• DISH Network Smart Card slot (back)

Differences

The 7100 has quite a few differences compared to the contemporary WebTV Plus boxes of the time, it is the only plus box with a hard drive to contain 16mb of ram as all old plus boxes with hdd’s have 8mb (Sony W200, Phillips MAT972, Etc.) and 16mb was only standard in later new plus boxes without hdd’s (Sony W250, Etc.)

It had a bigger stock hdd to make room for DVR recordings via the Dish Features (with later functionality added via Dish’s Personal TV service)

it notably also has two AV outputs with the intention of one going to your TV and one going to a VCR at least from what we could find from info pages about it back in the day, it also has an AV in and mic port on the front, tho it seems with the WebTV builds for the DishPlayer (internally named “WebStar”) any of the VCR pass-through and control functions previously included with plus boxes was removed (most likely swapped out for the DVR functions) and any attempt to try to load the AV input except for taking a picture for email or the website builder just either brakes the page and/or shows a “instant news is unavailable” screen (including in the av factory test)

It also has two smart card slots one for WebTV related stuff on the front and one for Dish service stuff on the back, notably, these boxes will not have much functionality and will refuse to load the TV home without a dish smart card inserted

Games

The DishPlayer Model also notably had a bit of different variation in games and while it included Doom that is pretty much untouched at least look and gameplay wise from the regular plus version, the two big differences is that You Don’t Know Jack notably had downloadable packs of YDJK: The Netshow which is not included on any other plus models and also it includes solitaire which is also not included on any other plus model (also it runs off the doom approm for some reason)

Pictures

[File:7100_Front.jpg]