If Real Audio music is used as background sound in an e-mail or newsgroup post, a WebTVer's terminal may be "frozen" in that message, unable to exit or do much of anything else; this is due to the heavy processing load brought on by the Real Audio music stream, which can overwhelm the WebTV's relatively limited memory, leaving no room for other tasks.

There is a common belief among many WebTV users that this "sticking" can cause actual physical damage to the box; I don't think that's the case.

The only part of any WebTV that could sustain damage in use (excepting the possiblity of an electrical surge from the power supply, which could fry anything) is the hard drive. Only the Dishplayer and the original Pluses have hard drives. All Classics and the new Pluses don't have hard drives.

The only way, sometimes, to unstick a stuck box is to unplug it (though the original Classics have a reset button on the back as an alternative), and sudden interruption of power to a hard drive isn't a good idea.

Not a good idea, but not fatal. Newer hard drives (and all WebTV's have new-enough drives to be called "newer") are designed in such a way that if the power is cut, the read/write head retracts very quickly up and away from the metal platter, making a head crash almost impossible in this situation (practically the only way to make the head smash into the recording surface is to drop or strike the device while it's running).

Does removing power from a hard drive do anything bad to it? Yes, it very slightly shortens its life; consider, though, that a hard drive's lifespan is around 10 years these days ... are you really going to have that WebTV in 2010? Don't think so.

P.S. If you're using a Plus or Dishplayer, there is a way to stop background music in its tracks: use Cmd-W to open the PIP window. Opening PIP interrupts any Web-side music that had been playing; this might be your key to escaping Real Audio jail.