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Ceefax Turns 30
VirtualUK writes "Ceefax, the text information service from the BBC turns 30 today (just 3 days after myself)!! For those not lucky enough to have seen what Ceefax is about, it is text information pages sent in out-of-band data space of TV transmissions in Great Britain. What started off as a subtitling project evolved into a service still used by over 20 million viewers a week even in the face of the Internet revolution. It just goes to show that for a lot of people, the best source of sport results, last minute holiday bargains and horoscopes is still just a click away on their TV remote."
It's called teletext here in the UK too. Ceefax is just the BBC's name for its teletext services.
All four terrestrial analogue broadcasters have teletext services and the hundreds of terrestrial/cable/satellite broadcasters have similar digital services too.
One interesting factoid about teletext is that, at one stage, over half the holidays in Britain were bought via teletext (ads on teletext, response by phone). Obviously, with the development of the Internet that's changed, but the teletext holiday market is still pretty big.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It's actually called teletext just about everywhere. CeeFax is simply an example of a teletext service. According to Wikipedia, CeeFax (a.k.a. Teledata) was first, and was followed closely by ORACLE. Other services came later.
:-)
Personally, I find this story very interesting. I had heard about teletext from one of those old Usborne books as a kid, but I'd never actually SEEN it. I'd always assumed that it was one of those little known services that really didn't go anywhere. It seems I was wrong.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's called teletext in the UK as well. It's just the BBC service that's called Ceefax (although the BBC teletext project was called Ceefax, and the ITV one was called Oracle, which both led to the names of the services). Oracle lost it's franchise in 1993, so Ceefax is the oldest teletext service in the UK, and probably the world. Oracle
To confuse things the company who have the rights to broadcast teletext on ITV, Channel 4 and Five (the rights were sold separately from the rights for general TV broadcasting on the frequencies) are now held by a company called Teletext Ltd, or just Teletext for short.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
It runs all the time on one of my desktops - IMHO it is the very best source of concise, up-to-date information.
Here are some dumps of the current BBC front pages, courtesy of alevtd and w3m (some stuff snipped to avoid slashdot "junk" lameness filter).
Its called Teletekst here in the Netherlands and is still used quite a lot. The public broadcasting corporation even has a web gateway. Check it out here for those of you unfamiliar with the concept of teletekst:
http://teletekst.nos.nl/
So you basically see all the area in black on your TV screen... use your remote to search for the pages.
I guess they have this service on the web because a lot of people, like another poster said, like the sparse/terse way of information presentation. I frequently visit the weather (page 702) and news page (page 101) for a quick overview. Very useful.
Also used for TV program listings and stuff like that (page 201 usually).
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Don't like to be picky but there are actually Five terrestial analogue broadcasters (although I personally can't get channel 5).
Don't like to be picky either (well, sometimes I do), but BBC1 and BBC2 are both BBC channels. That's one terrestrial broadcaster providing two channels. So the four terrestrial analogue broadcasters are the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and five.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext
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 ]
Indeed. This page makes interesting reading for any BBC micro fan. The paragraph after the first table mentions the use of Mode 7 and Teletext. It also mentions the BBC micro teletext adaptor
#include "disclaimer.h"
OK I'll bite.
It is true that we have to pay the Televison Licence every year and it's about £110-£120 (I have not checked). But look at all we get!
7 national, commercial free radio stations giving high quality music, spoken word, and live event output (like One Big Sunday if that's your bag or BBC Proms); 6 or so digital national commercial free TV channels with some pretty good original programming (and not so good too); loads of regional TV and Radio of similar quality; BBC Online; and, er, we gave the Yanks The Office, didn't we?
Sorry, I'm getting a lump in my throat here... Let me just step outside.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
And here's how the money goes
How your licence is spent
Each household's colour TV licence cost £9.67 every month in 2003/2004. On average each month, this was how the BBC spent your money:
Average monthly licence fee spend
BBC One £3.37
BBC Two £1.45
Digital television channels £0.98
Transmission and collection costs £0.98
BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 and Five Live £0.99
Digital radio stations £0.08
Nations & English Regions television £0.90
Local radio £0.61
bbc.co.uk £0.31
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science