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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."
One of the reasons Ceefax/Oracle was so popular was that it gave "just the facts, ma'am". It had to display on a 40x23 (ish) screen to work on the TV's of the time, and most pages used ZX81-style graphics (huge "pixels"
Curiously, this reduced content actually worked in its' favour - about all that could be put on a single page was the raw information, without political or other bias; there just wasn't the space for opinion. Even when they used linked pages (page displays, waits 30 secs, new page displays, repeat and loop) the real-estate was severely limited since each page had to stand alone.
I clearly remember preferring the minimalist information from Ceefax over the long-form in a newspaper. If I wanted more about a story, I could listen to the news or buy a paper, but to get an overview it was ideal. A good example of 'less is more'. It helps that the Beeb has good journalists who can succinctly tell a story, of course...
Simon (on-topic, for once
Physicists get Hadrons!
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 Compuserve 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!
:-)
Of course, the proliferation of U.S. BBSes started in the mid to late 80's and gained momentum right up until the Internet became popular in the mid-90's. Which makes me wonder. Is there a telnet machine somewhere where we can access the CeeFax info? It would be interesting to see what they're pushing over the airwaves.
Ah memories. Sometimes I wonder if the tech of the 80's wasn't cooler than the tech we have today. Sure, we have Gooey interfaces and full color graphics, but what's that compared to the thrill of interfacing systems over a modem, cursing at natural language interfaces, designing BBS screens in TheDraw, and wowing at the amount of info that's (unknown to the general populace) being pushed over massive research networks and dial-up nodes? (3 days for an email? That's speedy, man!) Or maybe I'm just nostalgic.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
not only wants to be free but aparently broadcasted in as many forms as possible
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
And yes, I'm in an NTL area that can't get it. And yes, I'm terribly annoyed - I used to use the subtitling quite often, even though I'm not deaf. Just wanted the volume off to listen to music, for instance, or needed to be quiet for some other reason.
NTL, please sort out the broadcasting of teletext as you claimed you weere going to do more than three years ago.
Cheers,
Ian
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
...and its days are numbered. The UK government's deadling for ceasing analogue transmissions is 2012, at which point we'll all have to use the richer digital content. The reason it's been so successful for so long is similar to fax's longevity: it just works, and everyone is familiar with it.
One "cool" thing about the teletext system was the little known fact that the page numbers are actually in HEX.
The "public" pages only use hex numbers that consist only of numeric characters, but I once had a TV that allowed you to enter the hex numbers aswell, and you could find all sorts of cool stuff, including some kind of system to automatically set video-recorders etc.
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
anyone remember the computer game page on channel 4 teletext called digitiser? That was some weird stuff..
l
http://www.lynn3686.freeserve.co.uk/digitiser.htm
http://www.mrbiffo.com/biffodigitiser.htm
'The Man' and his column and all that 'press reveal' only to uncover a weird swan or something with flashing red eyes.
I always wondered who was paying the wages of those crazy guys
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.
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
I still use Ceefax a lot, especially as a news source and for sports scores.
6. PROFIT !!!
:)
Sorry, couldn't resist
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 ]
Stop nit picking.
You must be new here.
The latest Slashdot meme.
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"
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!