In early 1996, I was a software engineer for Mitsubishi Consumer Electronics, in meetings to plan their first generation implementation of the ATV standard, on which current, U.S. HDTV devices are based. A huge priority for them at the time was to build a web browser into their television sets, and many ways to do this were investigated.
WebTV, which was pretty much the same idea in a set-top box, was in development at the time, and provided a model for that kind of thing, so Mitsubishi announced that they would, at some unspecified point, begin selling TVs with a feature they called "Diamond Internet" built into them.
It never happened. I don't know whether the issue was politics in the software department, or maybe just management recognition that it was a gimmick, but they never delivered such a product. Probably it came down to there just being too many other issues to manage to get an ATV set out the door.
However, it's clear that the idea's been there, lurking in people's minds, for the thirteen intervening years, and hasn't become any more useful a concept.
Incidentally, around that same time, I did buy a wonderful set-top-box by a company called Videoguide, that delivered TV schedules and news headlines to the device via unused text pager bandwidth. It was a great product, inexpensive and very useful, as even though I did have internet at home at that time, it wasn't an always-on connection. However, between shortened times to come out of sleep for laptops and PCs and the ubiquity of always-on internet connections in the home, I think the utility of a product like that isn't what it used to be. And anyway, Videoguide ended up getting bought out by Gemstar after spending tons of money.
