WTVP/Processes/Miscellaneous

Documentation for miscellaneous WTVP services utilized by WebTV/MSN TV.

Address list

Simple WTVP GET service hosted on a service URL defined in the final headwaiter response with the wtv-addresses-url header. This service is usually hosted on a wtv-mail server, and the original service URL used to host the service was wtv-mail:/addresslist. This service returns a list of contacts in a user's address book, listing both the nickname and e-mail address for each contact. This service is called after the client receives the final headwaiter response during login, or when a user pulls up the Send panel from the Options bar to let them choose which contacts to send a page to through the WebTV/MSN TV Mail service.

The response has a Content-Type of x-wtv-addresses, and the body consists of one or more NUL-terminated string sequences that follow this format: [Contact nickname][0x00][Contact e-mail address][0x00]

GET wtv-mail:/addresslist\r\n
wtv-system-cpuspeed: 166164662\r\n
wtv-system-sysconfig: 3116068\r\n
wtv-disk-size: 8006\r\n
wtv-incarnation: 4\r\n
\r\n

200 OK\n
Connection: Keep-Alive\n
wtv-encrypted: true\n
Content-Type: x-wtv-addresses\n
Content-length: {length of body}\n
\n
John Doe[0x00]johndoe@webtv.net[0x00]Jane Doe[0x00]janedoe@webtv.net[0x00]Joe Britt[0x00]joeb@webtv.net[0x00]

Mail sync service

Later in the WebTV/MSN TV service's life (by 2.9 at the latest), some pages started embedding a 1x1 GIF for the sole purpose of updating the message light on the current user's box to notify them of new mail sooner, if any. On the login splash screen, it embeds an image on wtv-mail:/splash-sync to do this. This is another simple WTVP GET service that returns a 43 byte GIF with minimal headers, including the wtv-mail-count header to tell the box how many unread messages the current user has, and an Expires header. Unlike most image files retrieved from the WTVP servers, the one sent by splash-sync is encrypted. Why it's encrypted is currently unclear.

200 OK\n
Connection: Keep-Alive\n
wtv-encrypted: true\n
wtv-mail-count: {number of unread emails in user's inbox}\n
Expires: 60\n
Content-type: image/gif\n
Content-length: 43\n
\n
{GIF image data}

47 49 46 38 39 61 02 00 02 00 80 00 00 2B 2B 2B   GIF89a....€..+++
00 00 00 21 F9 04 01 00 00 00 00 2C 00 00 00 00   ...!ù......,....
02 00 02 00 00 02 02 84 51 00                     ........Q.

It's believed that the service wtv-mail:/update-light performs a similar function to splash-sync. What's believed to be its response also sends a 43 byte GIF image, but the only captures we've seen of it are ones without any mail-related headers. Like splash-sync, the GIF is encrypted.

200 OK\n
Connection: Keep-Alive\n
wtv-encrypted: true\n
Content-type: image/gif\n
Content-length: 43\n
\n
{GIF image data}