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Teletext service in the United States

E

e-dawg

While I was traveling around in Europe, I found it interesting that their TV's has a teletext service that has information about news, weather, sports, traffic, tv times, lotteries, horoscopes, and movie times. Why doesn't the US includes this service, it will be great to found out the latest headlines without waiting until the evening or late night for the news. Especially flipping thru BBC 1 in UK, TF1 and France 2 in France, RAI Uno in Italy, RTP-1 in Portugal, La Uno y La Dos in Spain. etc.


Here's the information regarding teletext service from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext
 
It was tried in the mid-1980s. It flopped in the marketplace.

For years, CBS continued to use the technology to transmit internal data (show timings etc.) to affiliates. I would imagine that came to an end when the satellite links went digital.

It would be a LOT easier to do today with DTV -- just fire up another PID & stream. But with the same information so widely available on the Internet, it would flop even faster today.
 
I had a video tape at one time of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation from the early 90's that came from ABC and I discovered later that it had text listing the night's schedule included, and it actually would pull up from the tape. That's the only program that I had seen it on and discovered it by accident.

I've noticed that when a TV set is set on text during a live show like news or sports that sometimes a text box will pop up, but it's empty. I think it might have something to do with how the live broadcast is tied into closed captioning.
 
quadraphonic said:
I thought they had the internets in Europe?
Click to expand...

Well of course we do, but not (yet) on our TV sets. That is changing of course, and a combination of internet TVs and smartphones we may not have teletext in 10 or 15 years time.



But right now, if all you want is a weather forecast or the news headlines and the TV is already on it's much easier than starting up the computer as well, connecting to the net, loading IE.......
 
anotherguy said:
I've noticed that when a TV set is set on text during a live show like news or sports that sometimes a text box will pop up, but it's empty. I think it might have something to do with how the live broadcast is tied into closed captioning.
Click to expand...

Similar but different.

The captioning standard allows for four caption channels (so you can caption the same program in more than one language) and four text channels.

The only place I ever saw the text channels in use was on Wisconsin Public TV. They used to broadcast agricultural information (crop prices etc.) on Text-1. Could be they still do.

We get a few phone calls over the text channels. People hit the CC: button on their remote without noticing, turn the text channel on -- and then call to say "why aren't you fixing the big black box covering your picture??"...

Anyway, that's the same technology as closed captioning. Teletext is a similar but different technology.
 
BMR said:
quadraphonic said:
I thought they had the internets in Europe?
Click to expand...

Well of course we do, but not (yet) on our TV sets. That is changing of course, and a combination of internet TVs and smartphones we may not have teletext in 10 or 15 years time.



But right now, if all you want is a weather forecast or the news headlines and the TV is already on it's much easier than starting up the computer as well, connecting to the net, loading IE.......
Click to expand...
Yall turn off your computers? How quaint. ;D ;)
 
Well some people do- apparently.... :D


Like I say, internet TV will probably finish teletext off eventually. But only Samsung are currently promoting Internet TV in the UK- I'm not sure what sales are like because most people have only just upgraded to flat panel so won't be buying a new telly for a bit.
 
quadraphonic said:
BMR said:
quadraphonic said:
I thought they had the internets in Europe?
Click to expand...

Well of course we do, but not (yet) on our TV sets. That is changing of course, and a combination of internet TVs and smartphones we may not have teletext in 10 or 15 years time.



But right now, if all you want is a weather forecast or the news headlines and the TV is already on it's much easier than starting up the computer as well, connecting to the net, loading IE.......
Click to expand...
Yall turn off your computers? How quaint. ;D ;)
Click to expand...
I do. Doesn't everyone? With DTV, though, I'm wasting a lot of electricity since I don't want to have to turn on the box and the antenna every time I watch something, and I can't do that if I'm taping.
 
Just for fun, I did this as a 'cold start' race this evening. Getting in from a day out, and wanting to know who had won todays Premier League soccer match, I switched on the TV and converter box, selected a BBC channel and navigated a couple of menus to the result in under 30 seconds, while Windows was still loading on my laptop.

So for speed and simplicity teletext beats the internet hands down.
 
"I had a video tape at one time of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation from the early 90's that came from ABC and I discovered later that it had text listing the night's schedule included, and it actually would pull up from the tape."

Probably not Teletext; might have been XDS (which uses an alternate mode of the closed-captioning) or one of the CC text modes (mot the same thing as proper Teletext.)

As I understand, regular VHS VCRs (assuming your tape is VHS) don't have bandwidth wide enough to successfully record teletext, even in SP mode. Unless it's S-VHS...
 
I think you're right that it was probably the CC text mode. That's where I've seen the black box during live news or sports as well.
 
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