Microsoft plans to start shipping a new set-top box next week, and it's not your grandmother's WebTV.

Though MSN TV2 is the successor to the original WebTV devices, the new box is a vast departure from its predecessors.

On the outside, it's slick, with new video-playback and photo-viewing programs, and a custom version of Internet Explorer 6 designed to make Web browsing on the television a far less painful process. On the inside, it's a Windows CE-based product with a 733MHz Celeron--slow by PC standards but downright zippy in the world of set-top boxes.

Microsoft will sell the $199 device in two ways--as a dial-up product for technology newbies with $21.95 monthly service; and as an additional way for broadband homes to view the Web for $9.95 using the existing Internet connection. Newbies, who have historically been the bulk of MSN TV subscribers, are likely to be the majority of initial customers, said MSN TV General Manager Sam Klepper.

"We think over time, broadband (subscribers) will be half or more," Klepper said in an interview at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus here.