The most surprising thing (covered in the video at the bottom of the article) is that the MSN WebTV 2 has similar specs to the original Xbox. Major differences are lack of GPU as in the Xbox, Windows CE instead of a modified W2K, and twice the RAM (128 MB vs the Xbox’s 64).
I have 3 of the original ones in my basement that my parents were going to throw out years ago that I rescued. They were pretty awful in every way but I always hoped to do something with them eventually.
Maybe with this I can make a lo-fi HomeAssistant dashboard / control panel and/or plumb in the Weather Channel emulator (https://weatherstar.netbymatt.com/)