

UK's Teletext will go off air tomorrow, forever - handelaar
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/jersey/hi/tv_and_radio/newsid_8366000/8366937.stm

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gaius
This is really quite sad, Teletext was a fantastic example of what you could
do with, in modern terms, basically no resources. A teletext page is 1k of
data and you can only have 4 links to other pages, and it transfers data only
during the field blanking interval (when the rasterization line is moving from
the bottom right back to the upper left of the screen). Working within those
constraints every byte matters, and in terms of sheer usefulness/byte nothing
still can touch it.

When I was a kid, programming in MODE 7 was my favourite thing on the BBC
Micro, it was easy to produce something professional-looking. Gonna have one
last trawl through Teletext tonight I think.

~~~
andyking
I'd love to do the same, but in many areas of the UK (like mine) both Ceefax
and Teletext have already disappeared. It's being removed along with the
analogue TV signal region-by-region until the final transmitters are turned
off in 2012.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Our analogue signal was switched off and despite having a digital ready TV
we've not watched telly since. Spending license money on DVD rentals from the
library instead.

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tobych
Fond memories indeed. Like gaius, as a kid I had a BBC Micro, and created many
a pretend teletext page in MODE 7. In my final year studying computer science
in the UK, for my dissertation project I chose to try to get teletext
available on the X Window workstations on our SunOS computers. I didn't get as
far as the graphics side of it but I did implement a subset of RPC in BBC
BASIC and 6502 assembler on a BBC Micro equipped with a Teletext Adapter and
get pages coming across a serial line. I had my aerial attached to an upside-
down broomstick outside the computing lab. Just after my project finished,
broomstick and aerial were stolen, no doubt to be stuck in a similarly upside-
down traffic cone in someone's bedroom.

So goodbye Teletext. Oh, and all that music they used to play in the
background when all that was available late at night on TV was a selection of
Teletext pages.

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dtf
Ahh... fond memories. Bamboozle was an infuriating multiple choice
"interactive" gameshow, a bit like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. There was
even, for a while, a late night adult section called Teletext After Hours - I
particularly remember a comic called Turner The Screw, about a profane prison
guard. It really was quite innovative for a while (not to mention the BBC's
Ceefax services with their downloadable computer programs), but inevitably
turned into dross as they tried to monetize it with horoscopes and personal
ads funded by premium rate telephone numbers.

~~~
halo
I remember reading a story that Teletext After Hours used to share their
teletext pages with the kids pages and they were swapped after a certain time.
Only one morning the childrens pages weren't successfully swapped back over,
and soon after the Teletext After Hours got cancelled...

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handelaar
Non-internet-using analogue TV owners will no longer have access to flight
arrival/departure information, holiday booking adverts, horoscopes, and all
the other stuff they've been looking at since 1983.

No word in the article about subtitles (closed captioning). Channels 3 and 4
use Teletext p888 to broadcast them.

Ceefax on the BBC will remain, however.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax>

~~~
mooism2
> "Subtitles will be absolutely unaffected by the withdrawal of the public
> information service.

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Edinburger
I don't know how I will tell my father. He hasn't upgraded to the internet
yet!

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leej
it should be continued at least for basic information needs. it just is easy
to use.

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wendroid
Teletext used to distribute source code on their computing pages 600+. I
didn't have a teletext reader and used to transcribe it from the screen using
"STOP".

I never understood why modern TVs didn't cache every page in RAM instead of
waiting for it to come round next time.

