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."

Comments

Re:Teletext never really popular in the USA....

[ozric99]

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.

Re:Pretty cool stuff

[Pig Hogger]

That's pretty cool! Here in the U.S., we had to pay per minute for contemporary services on Compuserve. With prices as high as $0.20 per minute, it's no wonder that Compu$erve was primarily reserved for businesses! But to have hundreds of pages of text information pushed to your television set at no (excluding television tax) cost? That's amazing!

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????

Re:Pretty cool stuff

[aurelian]

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.