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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."
All of that is true, however it's largely unrelated - the rise of the public internet happened largely in the last decade, not 30 years ago.
...it is text information pages sent in out-of-band data space of TV transmissions...
/. course, I guess.
No, it is not 'out of band'. The data is sent using parts of the signal that are not part of the picture. If you know what the vertical blanking interval is, you know what I mean. If you don't, go learn something.
The submitter is no engineer. Par for the
The latest Slashdot meme.
You see, public entreprises (that belong to the State) aren't always bad... Public service is exactly what it says: service for the public, and not a sinister plot by the Government to enslave the population, as you yankees seem to be happy to believe so easily...
And where is Compu$erve, nowadays????I'd say that's pretty reasonable. The thing is it's just THERE. Instantly. If you wan't to see whats on TV next, just hit the text button and you've got it. Subtitles, blam, they're there!
:(
It's so simple and effective to use. I was hugely dissapointed when the text packed up on my TV recently.
When I moved to the US six years ago the lack of "text" on the TVs was most upsetting. It is funny how much one misses "the poor man's internet" once it is unavailable.
Hey, they don't even have proper colour in the USA! Things on the TV screen appear in colours as opposed to shades of grey, but the colour of the TV image usually is not the same as the colour of the real thing. That's the disadvantage of NTSC {where DC offsets tend to cause cumulative errors thanks to parasitic capacitances behaving as integrators} versus PAL {where errors due to DC offsets tend to cancel one another out very quickly, because the signal is inverted on every other line}. Also, the higher frequency PAL colour carrier allows for more bandwidth.
When we show the snooker on BBC2 -- and you have to watch the snooker if you've got a colour TV set, it's the law -- the table is green; there are fifteen red balls, and the coloured balls go: yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, black. In the States, to show a snooker match that anyone watching TV could understand, they would have to use a blue table, fifteen yellow balls, and the colours are orange, sky-blue, red, violet, creamy-white with little brown spots and black (which transmits fine). And there would be an advert break after every shot. Needless to say this does not help the players much. They tried showing pool on TV instead, but it was very disconcerting to be told the red player was winning when there appeared still to be seven reds on the table and the guy with the cue in his hand was taking aim at what appeared to be a yellow ball.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The performance is far faster on DVB-T, at least on the lastest decoder boxes. I was shocked when I saw the performance on a friends Sky box a few months ago.
Wasn't trolling... just pointing out it isn't free.
I wasn't aware that the TV license was more than just a "license to watch tv". That fact that you get what you do (ad free) makes it seem like a rather good deal. *jealous*
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Yeah the idea is that you consent to the majority opinion about what services are necessary. If you persuade enough other people to agree with you, then things change accordingly. It's called democracy - one of those things you're supposed to have learnt while growing up.