BBC's TV text to Shutdown

[Ger]

World's first teletext service, is set for a final bow as the UK's digital switchover is completed. Ceefax will take its final bow tonight 10/23/2012 via its analogue TV signal would disappear in a staged switch-off over five years, meant a slow withdrawal of Ceefax, ending with the final broadcast in Northern Ireland. as the beloved text service succumbs to the final stage of the UK's switch to digital television broadcasts

With the UK's digital switchover is completed by 10/24/2012 both uk and ireland will have change over two is digital television and radio channels but Fm band is still available long side its DAB

[urlhttp://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20032882][/url]

 

[kenglish]

KSL was experimenting with TeleText back in 1979, when I came here. It lasted for several years, but mostly as an "engineer's folly" experiment.

We eventually marketed it for stock-market information, and asked for a voluntary donation of $15 (one-time fee) for it's use.
Only one user paid. We kept the service running for a couple of extra years after that, until the encoding gear was unrepairable, then dropped it. He got his money's worth.

 

[Radio-X]

I should also point out that Ceefax was pretty much unused by the BBC for awhile. BBC1 went 24/7 broadcasting back in 1997-98, and (I think) BBC2 may still sign off once/twice per month.

I never went to UK back in the 80's/early 90's, but did they run the transmitters 24/7 with Ceefax and Instructional videos running during off-air hours? I know they did that with Radio 4's LW service, running Eastern European services for the Eastern Bloc and some World Service programming.

Radio-X

 

[smorris]

I should also point out that Ceefax was pretty much unused by the BBC for awhile. BBC1 went 24/7 broadcasting back in 1997-98, and (I think) BBC2 may still sign off once/twice per month.

I think you're misunderstanding the nature of Ceefax - you're correct that there was a time when TV channels broadcast pictures of Ceefax/Teletext pages at night when there was no live programming - but the Ceefax/Teletext services were 24/7 on-demand text services 'hidden' within unused space in the TV signal (not entirely unlike radio reading services found in the USA on FM). They could be accessed by special buttons on the TV remote. I just about remember it being very useful for checking the news/weather etc before leaving for school in the early 1990s.

This meant UK households could get news, weather and sport results on demand as far back as the 1970s. The main barrier was the cost of the technology - TVs with teletext were (for about the first 15 years of the service's life) far more expensive than normal ones.

 

[kenglish]

CBS ran a Teletext service in Los Angeles, during the 1984 LA Olympics. There were teletext kiosks located all over the area, using large CRT-based TV sets, and Norpak decoders, providing schedules and results.

We inherited a bunch of those afterward....I had the privilege of backing a news live-van in to one of them in the garage very late one night. Van was hurt, but the kiosk didn't get a scratch.

 

[radiocph]

CBS ran a Teletext service in Los Angeles, during the 1984 LA Olympics. There were teletext kiosks located all over the area, using large CRT-based TV sets, and Norpak decoders, providing schedules and results.

I remember seeing one at the Inglewood (CA) Public Library, a few weeks after the Olympics. I don't recall if it was set up so that one could interact with it. It was very much a "push media" affair, IIRC.

 

[Darth_vader]

"You're correct that there was a time when TV channels broadcast pictures of Ceefax/Teletext pages at night when there was no live programming"

"Pages from Ceefax" was what they called it. As I understand, they'd also play easy-listening songs to accompany it. Well, it beats pattern-and-tone, I guess.

"but the Ceefax/Teletext services were 24/7 on-demand text services 'hidden' within unused space in the TV signal (not entirely unlike radio reading services found in the USA on FM.)"

It is entirely unlike that. SCA channels are discrete narrowband analogue audio channels transmitted on their own frequencies that are simply X number of kilohertz down the dial from the main audio. Teletext is a serial data signal transmitted in the vertical blanking interval of the picture in a manner extremely similar to closed-captioning (and was used alongside CC data in the US implementation) just above the visible area.

Apples and oranges.