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We do sort of get Ceefax on digital services in some cases - we get a single page telling us to use the digital interactive replacement instead, which doesn't have a lot of the pages that Ceefax did.

This is what happens when you get it wrong. I actually knew a guy that lived near that.

I can't actually remember (and I used to work at the BBC as a transmitter engineer!), but I'm pretty certain that it was in hex. Here's a site for 'enthusiasts'. I'll leave you to wade through the details!

I remember sometimes waking very early in the morning before school. The morning news and cartoons weren't on yet, the sun was just coming up, only the sound of birds tweeting outside, and I'd switch the TV on to find a Ceefax page displayed with some quiet background music playing. I'd watch it for a minute or two, then grab a big bowl of Cornflakes and put the kettle on. It was always a nice way to start the day.

I digress. The technology was teletext with which the BBC provided CeeFax. ITV provided Oracle. Channel 4 provided C4 teletext.

Acorn added Teletext mode 7 to the BBC Microcomputer. It was great because it used just 1k of screen memory, thus many text adventures used it. With the addition of a teletext adapter such as those sold by Morley or Watford Electronics, you could take teletext transmissions and run them straight into your Beeb. The adapter also allowed for software to be downloaded from teletext pages, which given code size back in the day, was quite viable.

For oodles of information on teletext take a look at http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/links.shtml.

This page is also quite interesting: live teletext feeds around the world

At one stage they even had a software download service for the BBC micro:
http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/ceefax/telesoft ware/index.shtml
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/themicrouser/issues/05- 03/telesoftware.htm
http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/Teletext/Teleso ftware.html
Who needs Tucows or Sourceforge when there's Ceefax?!

I've spent many a happy hour browsing Ceefax, and this website about how it all fits together. As a youth it takes a lot of effort to work out how Ceefax sends the page you ask for, but there's no two-way communication -- Page Frame Relay comes to the rescue.

Bit of trivia -- Ceefax is ocasionally known as in the UK as the Skinternet because of the relative cheapness of getting on to Ceefax as opposed to the internet.
[ Skint + Internet ]

No UK broadcasters have online feeds, but the Teletext Now and Then site does have a couple of snapshots of Ceefax, one from the early 1980's, and a couple of current ones. The Irish broadcaster RTÉ has it's service, Aertel availible online however.

I still use Ceefax a lot, especially as a news source and for sports scores.

> I don't know what went on with the teletext thing you mention ...

This is probably the BBC removing the teletext data on all BBC TV channels inserted into the uplink feed to BSkyB sometime last year, which most people in Europe can receive. Traditional Teletext (the Ceefax service) is now only available via analogue terrestrial broadcast - digital terrestrial, cable and satellite BBC channels now carry the BBCi interactive TV service, which used to look like this and this, but now looks like this.

Nah, it's possible. It's done on ham radio all the time. In fact, you could probably run a local BBS this way.

Or you could encode the data in TV signals, teletext style.

Not sure how common this practice is, but they have been used in the past to check out the viability of locations for land based transmitter towers like Emley Moor in the UK

"The key to understanding this announcement is that ntl own all the transmitters up and down the country that are used to transmit all non-BBC television and radio."

Don't want to be pedantic, but that was the case until the 70's or perhaps early 80's - the days of VHF TV, but these days the BBC (or their subcontractors Crown Castle) own about half of the transmitters, NTL the rest, but all of the sites transmit both BBC and commercial services.

Kind of a reciprocal agreement, so that only half as many masts are needed, and so that you only need one receiving aerial.

(Transmitter Gallery)

This means that there are some areas where only Crown Castle/BBC operate transmitter sites who could be left out under your assertion.