
The Life and Death of Teletext - isostatic
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/teletext/58735/the-life-and-death-of-teletext-and-what-happened-next
======
aurelian15
If you're interested in decoding Teletext, there is libzvbi [1] which can
handle both data embedded in the raw "analogue" VBI stream [2] as well as the
corresponding data from MPEG TS's used in DVB.

This library also ships with VLC, so at least in most European countries,
where Teletext continues to be broadcast inside the MPEG TS, you can use VLC
to browse Teletext. This includes transport streams that have been recorded
(e.g. on a satellite receiver, see [3] for an example).

[1]
[http://zapping.sourceforge.net/ZVBI/](http://zapping.sourceforge.net/ZVBI/)

[2] [https://linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis/uapi/v4l/dev-
raw-...](https://linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis/uapi/v4l/dev-raw-vbi.html)

[3] [http://streams.videolan.org/streams/ts/Darius-
TS_Teletext.mp...](http://streams.videolan.org/streams/ts/Darius-
TS_Teletext.mpg)

~~~
kchr
Thanks!

------
kalleboo
Teletext still lives on in Sweden despite the digital switchover. As late as
last year, 20% of the adult population used it daily[0]

It's a very popular way to get the latest live goal-by-goal sports scores.
During the current World Cup I've seen people access "TextTV" as it's called
on their smartphones in pubs...

If you aren't at a TV it's served online on sites like
[https://www.svt.se/svttext/tv/pages/100.html](https://www.svt.se/svttext/tv/pages/100.html)
or even styled third-party mirrors like [https://texttv.nu](https://texttv.nu)
and there are iOS/Android apps

[0][http://pejl.svt.se/nu-slutar-mr-text-tv/](http://pejl.svt.se/nu-slutar-mr-
text-tv/)

~~~
digi_owl
It is funny how well it translated to the web, thanks to the pages all being
referenced by numbers.

------
niftich
Teletext is such a clever usecase, it's a shame it's not more widely deployed,
and on the way out. It fills some of the empty space among frames of a
broadcast with dense text about news and current affairs, giving
technologically effortless dissemination of popular content from a central
source, scaling to infinite receivers with no congestion and no loss of
quality. And the production of the content need not even be vertically
integrated; individual programs and segments can be sourced and syndicated
from third-parties.

In our rush to go point-to-point, full-duplex, and on-demand, with both
cabling and wireless, we have occasionally reimplemented services that are
one-to-many simplex on top of lower layers that aren't made for that, whereas
broadcast has always fulfilled the same usecase with a different set of
tradeoffs.

It's a bit ironic that new tech like HTTP/2 Push's cache fill is basically the
same idea as Teletext's pages transmitted one at a time and cached at the
receiver, but over a vastly different, pull medium.

~~~
jhoechtl
> Teletext is such a clever usecase, it's a shame it's not more widely
> deployed, and on the way out.

It's on it's way out because other media offer a far better use case to hammer
down ad our throat, trick us into click-baits, exchange information underneath
while we are reading.

In a time of full blown multimedia channels, the simplicity of the channel is
in favor of the user, that's why the providers are killing it. It's not bad
enough.

------
NicoJuicy
Everyone interested should know minitel, something similar ( more like
internet) but definately not the same [https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
history/cyberspace/minitel-th...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
history/cyberspace/minitel-the-online-world-france-built-before-the-web)

Or hn:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561)

~~~
digi_owl
In a sense a government sponsored BBS platform.

~~~
hyperman1
Technically maybe, but culturally, it was in a lot of ways closer to the
Internet . You could buy all kinds of services on-line, it was used by non
techies. It even had something the Internet hasn't: Usable micro-payments.

I believe the open nature of the Internet is a much better base for growth
than one where the slow-moving governmental phone monopoly controls
everything.

Even so, humanity lost something by not choosing the minitel path: The ad-
infested privacy-killing aspects of the net might be in a much better shape on
platform with minitel-like governing.

~~~
digi_owl
First off, in hindsight i should perhaps have likened it to AOL or some such.

As for losing something, best i can tell this came about because ISPs were
loath to become the "paymasters" of the internet.

Consider that for a brief moment, before all this hoopla about app stores, the
mobile world had something akin to what minitel had. I could fire up a WAP
page on my phone, pick out a game or similar, hit download, and the cost would
be added to my mobile bill at the end of the month.

Nothing says that we could not see something similar on the web, except that
ISPs do not want to be in the position to bill us for those downloads etc.

------
joezydeco
In America the Keycom/KeyFax system (based on the BBC's Ceefax) was tried in a
few cities. You needed to rent a terminal that connected by telephone line to
a server. While the US had other text only service-by-dialup systems like The
Source and CompuServe, KeyFax was the predecessor of the graphical systems
like Prodigy and QuantumLink/AOL:

[http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/CARLSON/history/Keycom.htm](http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/CARLSON/history/Keycom.htm)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4982KbJDG-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4982KbJDG-E)

(For astute viewers, watch the end of the video and see a very young Oprah
Winfrey doing an ad for her morning show)

In Chicago, a read-only version of KeyFax was broadcast for a short while on
Channel 32 (WFLD) during the overnight hours when the transmitter was usually
dark.

[https://www.retroist.com/2018/05/09/chicagoland-gems-
keyfax-...](https://www.retroist.com/2018/05/09/chicagoland-gems-keyfax-nite-
owl-service/)

------
gsich
Death?

Still in use in Europe. I know it hasn't had much widespread use in the US.

The limited format makes it very good for displaying only relevant
information. Once fully loaded, it's faster then going to the website of the
program, or just to receive e.g. sport outcomes.

~~~
digi_owl
Best i can tell, it is the national broadcasters that keep them in operation
because they don't have to consider ad revenue. USA do not have anything like
that, so it would not surprise me that their channels wants to phase it out
(or forgo implementing it in the first place).

~~~
icebraining
I don't know about the regular teletext menu, but in my country the
broadcasters (public and private) are required to have teletext subtitles on
page 888 in much of their programming, for accessibility reasons.

------
acqq
> much of the software is obscure by today’s standards (including a slightly
> dubious Star Trek game)

Anybody knows why is the "obscure" "Star Trek" game for BBC Micro described as
"dubious"? Especially if it's this one:

[http://www.dunnington.info/public/startrek/strek](http://www.dunnington.info/public/startrek/strek)

Background:

[http://www.dunnington.info/public/startrek/](http://www.dunnington.info/public/startrek/)

~~~
jhbadger
Yes, that Trek game is a version of the standard Trek game that was popular on
mainframes & minis in the 1970s. I suspect the "dubious" adjective is there
because it wasn't at all licensed -- before computers were mainstream,
enthusiasts just thought they could make games based on their favorite
properties and nobody would care about the legality.

~~~
acqq
> it wasn't at all licensed

Is there any information that it was even possible to "license" a small game
written in BASIC which appeared in various printed forms and various versions
rewritten by various people?

~~~
jhbadger
Perhaps not, as computer games were probably unknown to lawyers at that point.
But this sort of thing (even when done totally not for profit and purely out
of love of a franchise) gets shut down quickly today -- there are many mods
and such that were given cease and desist notices for using characters from
Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, etc.

~~~
acqq
> this sort of thing ... gets shut down quickly today

That seems to confirm my belief that if that was the idea behind it, the
attribute "dubious" is anachronistic, i.e. appearing to be so only when
observed out of the context of that time, as if it would happen now.

------
open-source-ux
You can download a BBC Research report on Ceefax from August 1977 that gives
an overview of teletext from it's birth to initial launch.

Report summary:

> The development of the CEEFAX information broadcasting system from initial
> work in 1966 to the end of the two-year experimental period in 1976 is
> described.

> The background to the choice of transmission and display parameters is
> given, together with details of laboratory and field experiments. Particular
> emphasis is given to the selection of the addressing and coding systems to
> give reliable reception throughout the normal television service area.

> The basis for the choice of the many supplementary facilities of CEEFAX,
> such as colour and graphics, is presented together with indication of the
> provisions made for future expansion in the use of CEEFAX.

CEEFAX: evolution and potential (PDF):
[http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1977-26.pdf](http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1977-26.pdf)

------
okket
Teletext is still very much in use here in Germany. As bare bones news and
sport results fed by public broadcaster the 'www for retired people' is still
somewhat popular.

------
elthor89
My das still reads Teletext via an app on the iPad. I was perplexed and
amsused that he uses a modern and expensive device for something well so old-
school :).

------
timthorn
I vaguely remember an experimental voice recognition system, where you could
dial in and direct the content of pages. I fear I don't remember much about
the application itself, but voice recognition was just magic in those days.

------
JdeBP
The article mentions Teefax only briefly.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17430660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17430660)

Others in this discussion have mentioned that this is not the situation
outwith the U.K.. The headlined article only discusses the U.K.. For a
slightly less parochial view:

* [http://radios-tv.co.uk/Pembers/Teletext/index.html#After](http://radios-tv.co.uk/Pembers/Teletext/index.html#After)

------
rubenbe
It's unfortunate that teletext is dying/dead. You could really quickly access
the info you needed. Often overview pages on a certain topic were on the same
number, so you could just blindly type a three digit number and have the
(textual) info you needed. If you didn't know the numbers by heart, you could
still navigate to the page through te menu structure. Simple UX.

~~~
kalleboo
One place I lived had train ticket machines from the 90's that were an analog
of Teletext. If you knew the 3-digit zone code for your end station, you could
just jam in the zone code, adult, buy ticket, pop in your magstripe card and
have a ticket in 5 seconds flat. It was absolutely perfect.

They were then replaced with user-friendly Windows-powered machines where
buying the most basic ticket took 2 minutes as you had to poke though pages of
stations on a crap resistive display.

~~~
digi_owl
Some time back there was an article about the use of floppies in the Norwegian
health service. The reason for it was that some doctors stuck to their DOS
based patient journals, as they were fully keyboard operated. Thus they were
able to operate them by memorizing the inputs, and could bring up various info
without taking their focus of the patient.

And i have observed similar in stores that used DOS based POS terminals, where
the operator could add your latest purchase and bring up warranty history with
barely a glance at the screen.

And in a more modern sense, i see people getting all giddy about the Android
based Blackberry phones because now they have an actual keyboard to use.
Meaning that they can hammer out a text or similar on tactile alone.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Airlines use a command line interface for managing passengers. It definitely
looks like it has a steep learning curve, but they can get things done pretty
quickly.

~~~
zokier
Actual command line, or just good old-fashioned terminal forms/curses/etc
interface?

~~~
robjan
Usually it's a terminal emulator (in most cases implemented in Java) providing
a thin client to a mainframe or Global Distribution System, such as Amadeus.
This type of frontend is being phased out but the new systems usually have a
requirement to maintain the exact same keyboard mappings so that the GUI can
be navigated in the same way as the terminal.

~~~
zokier
Huh, found this video about one of those systems, pretty interesting UI
actually. For most parts it is very much a true command line interface, and
pretty hard-core with everything abbreviated to minimum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jupRvrLcB_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jupRvrLcB_g)

Also the wiki has this interesting snippet:

> Amadeus is a computer reservation system (or global distribution system,
> since it sells tickets for multiple airlines) owned by the Amadeus IT Group
> with headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The central database is located at
> Erding, Germany.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_CRS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_CRS)

Which kinda implies that all terminals all around the world are connected to
one single database! I imagine they have fairly hefty mainframes in the
backend.

~~~
robjan
The truly fun thing for someone working on these systems is each booking is
just a flat text file with the line prefix indicating what is on the line.
Sometimes when we need to implement new features/products we just have to use
a generic remark (RX) and kind of coordinate with each other about what it
means (or not, which sometimes causes fun when trying to manage interline
bookings).

Another fun fact is that the booking records are recycled, the frequency of
which depends on how many bookings there have been recently. The storage is
"infinitely scalable" until the number of seats on planes starts to outgrow
the number of bookings that we can hold.

