Is/was this something specific to Europe and UK? I'm in the U.S., born in '66, a...

sparky_ · 2024-04-20T14:14:57 1713622497

Yes, it wasn't a thing in the US, but basically all televisions in Europe had a text mode for this, and it was very popular when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.

joezydeco · 2024-04-20T14:32:57 1713623577

US televisions didn't have support for the blanking interval data and GUI, and it never got added to the NTSC standards.

For a brief period in the 1980s a few companies tried to provide teletext service, either over modem or a UHF decoder to a home computer or - more bizarrely - as a read-only presentation done overnight when no other scheduled programming was being shown.

Keyfax in Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgs0kbxo68w

Keycom home service: https://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/history/Keycom.htm

Aloha · 2024-04-20T15:08:51 1713625731

I think it did get added to the NTSC Standards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NABTS

That said, there were several other competing standards offered at the same time including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_(teletext)

The issue of course - like everything else with standards adoption in the states, the decoder wasn't mandated to be included with TV sets.

skissane · 2024-04-20T14:52:36 1713624756

Australia had it too (called “Austext”), it was shut down in 2009

In the 1990s, most TV sets could receive it, but I don’t think many people actually used it.