Millions of Brits Lose Ceefax News Service

judgecorp writes "Millions of Britons have lost access to Ceefax, the real time information service that has piggy-backed on blank lines of the analogue TV signal since the 1970s. Analogue TV is being switched off, and the low-res news service looks to be going with it. From the article: '“Although we won’t be saying our proper goodbyes to Ceefax until later in the year when switchover is complete across the country, I wanted to send a note of reassurance and a reminder: our digital text service, available via the red button to people who use cable, satellite or Freeview, provides national, local and international news, plus sport, weather and much else besides,” said Steve Hermann, editor of the BBC News website.'"

Comments

..and the actual link is:

[Bongoots]

The title and summary seem to suggest that the system as a whole has had a failure of some kind, though it's nothing of the likes. It's just the analogue > digital switchover means that people will "lose" access to it, however the BBC provides digital services anyway.

Steve Hermann's post on his blog can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2012/04/from_ceefax_to_digital_text.html

Re:..and the actual link is:

[mindwhip]

The "Dear Ceefax" article on the BBC news site gives a more human perspective... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17745100

I'm sad in some ways part of my childhood is going with it. I have many childhood memories of the kids pages, bad jokes, looking up when my favorite TV show was on and *having my name on TV!* on my birthday.

But the world has moved on, the Ceefax that is/was available today is a shadow of its former self.

I'm going now before I get too far down memory lane that I end up late for work...

Re:..and the actual link is:

[arkhan_jg]

And of course, it's only come up as news because London has just done its analogue switchoff so the digital channel transmitters can be upped to their full broadcast power.

For almost everyone in the rest of the country, we went through the digital switchover quite some time ago; years in many cases. And of course, ceefax went with it back then. My own switchover happened in may 2009 - I barely noticed, as I'd already been on freeview (digital broadcast) for several years before that.

To be honest, I haven't looked at ceefax in many years, so I won't miss it. The 'net has long since superseded it for me as a source of news, weather, info etc.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[pe1chl]

What all you Britons should know is that there is no technical reason why you don't get Ceefax after the digital switchover.
The digital system has support for TXT and in many other countries, including the Netherlands, the TXT service has remained in
place after digital switchover, which was completed years ago here.
There must be some political or financial reason why your BBC is dropping Ceefax. It has nothing to do with the digital switchover
as it is.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a digital text service. It's now just pants.
You get News, and sport, and that's it.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[makomk]

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.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[TheRaven64]

I was very slightly too young for it, but when the BBC Micro was introduced they used to broadcast source code on a few of the Ceefax pages overnight. The idea was that schools could retrieve them using the teletext decoder and use them in lessons the next day.

I do remember when I was young enjoying the jokes and puzzles on Ceefax. Remote controls had a 'reveal' button and you could hide some parts of a page until this button was pressed, so pages contained jokes with the punchlines hidden and puzzles with the solutions hidden. Some film and book review pages also used this to hide spoilers.

It was generally the easiest way to get a TV schedule, especially once the newer TVs came in that did caching for pages (each of the pages would have its content updated very few seconds to scroll through things that were longer than a single page of text - newer TVs would record these and let you page through them without waiting for the next page to be broadcast). My mother still uses it to check the weather forecast.

I won't miss Ceefax - I've not used it for about a decade - but it was a very impressive technology for its time.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[pe1chl]

Yes, and there also still is page 888, isn't it?

It clearly shows that you are being fed shit.
There is no such thing as "Ceefax has to go because analogue tv ends".
It is a decision made for other reasons.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[JasterBobaMereel]

We do get it on the BBC, there is a "Red button" text service with all the same information as was provided by Ceefax ....

Re:..and the actual link is:

[clive_p]

One very useful thing that the new digital text service doesn't have is the accurate time. Old analogue teletext had a display of hours minutes and seconds. New one has only hours and minutes, and because of decoding delays etc. even the minutes don't change right on the 0 seconds point. I have to find another way to check my watch.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[nozzo]

At first I thought I was reading an echo from the 1990s as I thought Ceefax was gone long ago. Ceefax as an information service has been copied into the digital format and works pretty much the same way i.e. you can enter 'page numbers' to go to the information needed directly and it's a lot better as it has different fonts and pictures. The old Ceefax had a similar look to Prestel and although fantastic resources in their day, have not had their day.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are posting on /. so you should be able to configure your computer clock to synchronise with an NTP server.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent plenty of time in the 90s browsing Ceefax pages, and the C4 computer games pages, etc. Saturday afternoon when I cared about football I'd be all over pages 304, etc, getting the latest scores before Final Score came on the TV. Or checking up on the news instead of waiting for the bulletin.

Thank god the internet came along.

Stolen Joke: For your own experience of Ceefax, print out the plain text of a webpage on multiple sheets of paper in a large, ugly fixed-width bitmap font, and attach them to tortoises doing laps of your room, and only read the page directly in front of you.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. set up time synchronization on your computer
2. check your watch
3. hand in your geek card
Simple!

Re:..and the actual link is:

[dave420]

And you should try to understand what the BBC offers before thinking it's some nefarious reason why they're dropping Ceefax. Ceefax was entirely different to the "TXT" stuff you speak of, which is still being offered. :)

Re:..and the actual link is:

[digitig]

What all you Britons should know is that there is no technical reason why you don't get Ceefax after the digital switchover. The digital system has support for TXT and in many other countries, including the Netherlands, the TXT service has remained in place after digital switchover, which was completed years ago here.

And including the UK. The digital text service is far more flexible and powerful than Ceefax (and ITVs TELETEXT), and the BBC has been taking advantage of that, so the digital text service is not the same as Ceefax.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[digitig]

Yes, and there also still is page 888, isn't it?

It clearly shows that you are being fed shit. There is no such thing as "Ceefax has to go because analogue tv ends". It is a decision made for other reasons.

The sort of stuff that used to be on Ceefax and isn't on the digital text service is now on the BBC website, except that there it's far more extensive and interactive. Ceefax is simply obsolete; it's no longer a sensible way of delivering those services.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Malc]

I knew an Aussie living in Edinburgh in 1995 who "watched" the Ashes on Ceefax. I can't remember why he didn't have the radio on... maybe he didn't want to hear pomme commentators :) Ceefax was replaced by the internet for me, listening along with the radio (I hate you Rupert Murdoch for putting our national sport on pay tv; give it back!)

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another way that digital is worse than analog...

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't have anything to do with digital teletext. I should know it, I have implemented the digital teletext support in MPlayer and it uses almost the same code (except for the black-white image -> bits conversion which is already done) as the analog one.
And the DVB-T teletext in Germany is 100% identical to before the switch.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[der_joachim]

...our national sport...

What sport would that be? Binge drinking?

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Dogtanian]

It was generally the easiest way to get a TV schedule, especially once the newer TVs came in that did caching for pages (each of the pages would have its content updated very few seconds to scroll through things that were longer than a single page of text - newer TVs would record these and let you page through them without waiting for the next page to be broadcast).

Such caching makes a massive difference, but it's worth remembering that it's a luxury that wasn't- and couldn't have been- possible in Teletext's heyday. The early sets could only hold the page that was being displayed, and if you wanted to change the page (or wait for the next page in a set of (e.g.) 4 to load) you had to wait for it to be transmitted again, which could be around 30s. (IIRC some later sets cached a few pages, but it was still limited).

The experience of Teletext I remember from the older sets was that of having to *wait*. Don't get me wrong- it was amazing for its time (it actually came out in the mid-70s, before even the Atari VCS)- but it still had its limitations.

I got a new TV in mid-2010 and I was very impressed by the speed of the Teletext- it was obviously caching the pages, and the performance was massively better than the waits I remembered from before. This made a huge difference in usability, but as I said wouldn't have been possible in Teletext's heyday.

The reason is simple- a single page (40 x 24 characters) would take just under 1 KB to store, and back in the late 70s / early 80s even just a few extra kilobytes (1 KB for every page you wanted to cache) would have massively increased the cost (e.g. even the Vic 20 computer only had 3.5K or whatever, the unexpanded ZX81 came with 1KB and the 16KB "ram pack" was £30, around £80 in today's money).

By mid-2010, even the few *megabytes* that would be needed to cache every page on all five main channels would add negligible cost to the electronics, so there was probably no reason not to. But that amount of memory would have cost ludicrous money (tens of thousands of pounds) even in the early 80s, and probably an order of magnitude more when Teletext first hit in the mid-70s.

Of course, six weeks after I got that set the analogue signal (and old-style Teletext) was switched off with it in my area, so it was kind of moot. :-/

That said, I did remember feeling that Teletext's time had been and gone.

And yes, this story is in the British news *now* because up-its-own-arse-oh-so-important London is being switched off. They're not the last area to switch over, and they're *far* from the first.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, I'm American.

Was teletext ever used to relay emergency information?

Given how horrible DTV can be, isn't analog TV better for emergency information too?
Because in storm situations where a tree knocks out the power and/or cable, portable TVs should reign supreme given battery power and the ability to pick up TV reception; although DTV reception is lousy where I live. Not sure what analog was like where I live now, but I can't imagine it being anywhere near like DTV is.
Why oh why couldn't they just leave one analog station to broadcast in case of emergencies?! Oh well. Maybe they could do that still. How hard would it be to start up an analog broadcast, boost it to full power for a region, hoping people will tune their DTVs to pick it up? Although letting them know to retune is another issue.

My AverMedia TVBox 7 (or whatever the specific version is), which I don't use for TV much anymore, has a teletext button on it. It kind of makes me jealous you guys have/had this sort of thing.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[arth1]

The sort of stuff that used to be on Ceefax and isn't on the digital text service is now on the BBC website, except that there it's far more extensive and interactive.

Part of the charm of Ceefax was that it didn't have to be interactive - you could lie on the sofa, read a book, and glance over and see that the page had updated.
In text actually big enough to be read from the sofa at an angle. You could also use it for multi-language subtitles, or commentary, because the background image could be the TV picture.

Ceefax is simply obsolete; it's no longer a sensible way of delivering those services.

Same with text messaging compared to e-mail, and I thought text messaging would go away when I got my first e-mail sending phone in the mid-to-late 90s.
When something is popular, it doesn't matter much whether it's sensible or not. Ceefax lost popularity for other reasons, like too infrequent updating and bad support in TV sets. (And this is true for digital text TV too - a typical mid 90s set had better support than a new one)
BBC is killing it off because the viewers are going-going-gone.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Inda]

I wasn't too young. My grandparents had one of those new style colour TVs and it was the reason I liked visiting them. When we got a colour TV years later, it was able to cache 10 pages and it had the four-colour fast navigate function!

I also remember some nerdy tech programmes spewing Ceefax/Teletext pages after the credits. The idea was to record the end, on one of those fancy VeeCeeArrs, and use the frame forward function to view each page; it was one page per frame and didn't really work.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[AmiMoJo]

Not the same, it only carries a small fraction. In particular the Dear Ceefax letters page used to provide me with some daily amusement and despair in equal measure.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[majesticmerc]

Some people really do have convoluted methods for looking at their wrist!

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Malc]

Nah, that's a way of life. Maybe it's a sport for the amateurs who come out on St. Patrick's day.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[DrXym]

Digital channels have broadcast teletext at various points, even on Sky. I think the shutdown is just recognition that it is replaced by something better and it costs money to run two services in parallel so the old one is going. It may linger on as some placeholder that says push 888 for subtitles but that's about it.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[famebait]

when the BBC Micro was introduced they used to broadcast source code on a few of the Ceefax pages overnight.

Ah, that brings me back.

This was proabably also the reason the BBC micro had a native teletext display mode (good old "mode 7"), which gave you the magic combo of fairly pretty text, color, and even primitive graphics in only 1K of display memory. A real life-saver for many apps when the whole thing only had 32K.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have to find another way to check my watch."

Check your cellphone or get a radio-controlled watch for 20 bucks.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[xaxa]

I knew an Aussie living in Edinburgh in 1995 who "watched" the Ashes on Ceefax.

My dad would regularly "watch" sport (football, cricket, rugby, snooker) on Ceefax.

There were sometimes special pages, where almost all of the page was transparent except a couple of lines at the bottom showing the cricket score, so you could watch the football on another channel. But more often that not, he'd read a magazine while glancing up at the Ceefax screen every few minutes to see if England had lost another wicket.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Politburo]

There are some 250+ million cars in the US, nearly all of which are equipped with a radio. There is little need for visual information in a real emergency.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[makomk]

I think Fasttext - a feature that offered 4 colour-coded links at the bottom of the page to other pages that were pre-cached - was fairly widespread in Teletext's heyday. It was certainly widely available well before ordinary non-academic individuals could get home internet access.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[xaxa]

Was teletext ever used to relay emergency information?

No. Natural disasters tend to be pretty tame compared to what you get in North America. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_in_the_British_Isles

BBC Radio 4 broadcasts in digital, FM and longwave. They could broadcast something. Alternatively, for flood warnings (which is the most common problem) local radio stations would probably broadcast something -- even if it were just part of the normal weather report.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, this story is in the British news *now* because up-its-own-arse-oh-so-important London is being switched off. They're not the last area to switch over, and they're *far* from the first.

You do realise that almost 1/5 of the UK population lives in the London area, don't you, so something that affects London is going to be important to a greater percentage of the UK population than something that affects both Scotland and Wales.

That said, I haven't used teletext in like 10 years, and there is still a version of it on digital TV, so it is a bit of a non-story as afr as I'm concerned.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

Until radios can deal with people who are hard of hearing (or deaf), I still say we need some sort of analog TV backup. TV has closed captioning for the news.

By the way, on a lighter note...
If any one of us gets a chance to speak on TV, and assuming closed captioning is done by a person and not by software, some words to memorize and to say: http://writinghood.com/style/the-most-horrible-english-words/

Re:..and the actual link is:

[cpu6502]

Digital TV in the U.S. can carry additional channels that are nothing but music or nothing but text. Don't digital UK TV have the same capability?

We also have an average of 3 programs per station. Some stations carry just 1; some as many as 10. Does UK DTV have that ability?

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to find another way to check my watch.

Isn't your life hard? Well you still have the radio pips, and all sorts of atomic time-based Internet solutions, assuming the computer you are using to post with doesn't have a functional clock. For example Speaking clock. You also have your phone, which probably updates automatically with timezone and DST changes, as well as things like radio-controlled alarm clocks.

Might I suggest that if your watch is so inaccurate you need to snyc it everytime you look up at the TV, you should probably find about about these new-fangled "quartz" doohickeys which stay accurate for more than 5 minutes.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Dogtanian]

I think Fasttext - a feature that offered 4 colour-coded links at the bottom of the page to other pages that were pre-cached

Yes, I couldn't remember for sure if caching was an integral part of Fastext (and vice versa), but I was pretty sure that some sets did feature it- hence "some later sets cached a few pages". However, it was hardly in the same league as having all (or even a significant proportion) of pages cached and being able to flick between them almost instantaneously.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Dr_Barnowl]

The DVB-T signal actually contains an accurate time stamp though ; I use it to set the clock on my MythTV box because the network connection can be kind of patchy.

There's no reason for an encoding / decoding delay on digital teletext - it's included as additional streams in the multiplex and not in the vertical blanking interval (because there isn't one in a digital TV stream), so it's not tied to the video at all.

It's more likely that your STB sets it's internal clock at a long interval and has a stupid amount of clock drift.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[jonbryce]

Yes, we have "Red Button" in the UK which does that.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[jonbryce]

In the UK, the national sport is Football (en_US: Soccer), except in Wales, where Rugby is the national sport.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[jonbryce]

We do have a digital text service, but it is called Red Button, not Ceefax.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

There are places in Britain outside of London? :O

Re:..and the actual link is:

[markxz]

My TV cached the Fastext pages (this was noticeable if you advanced onto the next page before it had been broadcast and loaded). It did make things a lot quicker when going through the news pages.

Fastext also allowed access to pages that did not have a page number (instead they had an alphanumeric reference that could not be entered on most TVs). This was used on the Teletext service (on the commercial channels) to run some multiple choice quizzes.

The more popular pages (particularly the index pages) were transmitted more often than the less popular pages which increased the speed for most users.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[markxz]

The BBC service on digital TV kept the same pagenumbers for a lot of the content so that it was an easy transition for viewers.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[markxz]

Keeping Ceefax alive would mean that they would need to have three versions of most text content (website, red button and ceefax) of these ceefax was the most limited (there was a fixed amount of space on each screen).

Re:..and the actual link is:

[vakuona]

No it isn't.

If anything, in England it is probably cricket. But given that the English invented Rugby (Union and League), Association Football, Cricket, there really is no de jure national sport.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[vakuona]

One of the good things about text messaging is that it costs money (hear me out) and so it is less likely to be spammed. I still get text spam, but not nearly as much as I do with email.

The bad thing is that it costs money, so I have to either pay to send me, or get a plan with many texts included.

Now, I would kill for a text messaging service that:
  - costs a "trivial amount" for an individual (say a fiver a month) but would discourage a spammer
  - limits the number of text messages one can send (really important anti-spam feature);
  - doesn't cost more to send half-way round the world as is does to someone two feet away.

One of the problems with text messaging is that the companies won't come up with a single messaging standard that works on all platforms (What'sapp doesn't count). So we have BBM and iMessage. I wish they would cooperate more, I really do!

Re:..and the actual link is:

[mindwhip]

Yes and who can forget (like I did) that Ceefax provided the first subtitles system that didn't require a lot of expensive equipment, initially for per-recored programmes and then later for live news and finally for advertisements.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is true for digital text TV too - a typical mid 90s set had better support than a new one

Digital television only came about in the late '97 and text services (the BBC's anyway) didn't start at launch, probably '98 or '99 at the earliest and in a very simple form far different to today.

Early receivers (cannot comment on the various cable platforms of the time but certainly used DSAT and DTT around the time) were appallingly slow and buggy. It took an age for my old Ondigital box to load the BBC Text service that was far less graphic heavy than today. Now a cheap box for under £30 from the supermarket is substantially faster. This is in part, like Ceefax, to do with caching but also processor speed.

Interestingly Freeview often has far better results with digital text (MHEG in its case) because receivers and integrated digital televisions are massed produced, whereas Sky have a closed market with many people keeping the same receiver for many years leading to slower improvements.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[Anonymous Coward]

And you should try to understand what the BBC offers before thinking it's some nefarious reason why they're dropping Ceefax. Ceefax was entirely different to the "TXT" stuff you speak of, which is still being offered. :)

I think he was talking about carrying actual teletext (so Ceefax) via digital means.

Entirely possible in the DVB spec. It's done by encoding the raw magazine data, which would be carried on the Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) lines on analogue, into a data stream that is carried in the transport layer alongside the MPEG video. The receiver then does one of two things - if its a set top box for an analogue set, it reinserts the data back into the VBI lines of the PAL signal it produces (acting as a VBI inserter) or if its a digital television will send it straight to its own teletext generator. This is entirely independent to the text services (MHEG, OpenTv, MHP depending on platform and country).

Naturally this process is needed as the concept of VBI lines won't exist in the digital video stream and in any case the lossy MPEG compression would likely corrupt them if they did.

This process is used in many parts of Europe, and was used on Sky Digital by the BBC, Sky and others for many years before being discontinued. The UK broadcasters agreed never to support teletext on DVB-T (a.k.a Freeview), though this is implemented in other countries.

Re:..and the actual link is:

[robsku]

The sort of stuff that used to be on Ceefax and isn't on the digital text service is now on the BBC website, except that there it's far more extensive and interactive.

Part of the charm of Ceefax was that it didn't have to be interactive - you could lie on the sofa, read a book, and glance over and see that the page had updated.
In text actually big enough to be read from the sofa at an angle. You could also use it for multi-language subtitles, or commentary, because the background image could be the TV picture.

I am writing this while sitting on a sofa - and with DVB-T you get to enjoy multi-language subtitles (without delay too) if the channel sends them. Here in Finland YLE-network channels have "digi subtitles" for Finnish and Swedish.

Our "Ceefax" was (is?) called "teksti TV" (trans: Text TV) and I really don't miss it for anything, though it was mighty useful, especially when I had separate TV set and computer and wanted to check what was on without going to 'puter...

London bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn - this happened ages ago for the rest of the country, but as usual nothing is said until it affects London ...

Re:London bias

[Anonymous Coward]

And your point is what, exactly?

Re:London bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I've had enough with all this pro-London bias on Slashdot. How about some US news for a change?

Re:London bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn - this happened ages ago for the rest of the country, but as usual nothing is said until it affects London ...

I think you should be impressed that Slashdot even noticed -- after all, it isn't affecting the US at all.

Re:London bias

[91degrees]

British media has a very London centric bias even though only about 10% of the population lives there

Re:London bias

[jaymemaurice]

because 90% of the BBC reporters dream to live and work in London?

Re:London bias

[spongman]

yes, only 10% live there, but more people live there than anywhere else.

Re:London bias

[Theophany]

10% of the population live within 1500 square kilometres. Statistics are meaningless without context.

Re:London bias

[Nursie]

The greater London area, those that commute in or are centred around there, makes up somewhere closer to a quarter of the population, maybe more. Most of the money in the UK is made in the capital and surrounding areas.

The UK is London-centric. Not just the media.

I don't live there any more (ex-pat) nor will I when I move back to the UK later this year, but it's a bit of an unavoidable thing with Britain.

Re:London bias

[TheMathemagician]

Yes you're right. In fact if you just consider England, not Britain, then 1/3 of the population lives in London or the South-East. This isn't a good thing - it leads to ridiculous imbalances in employment and property prices - but it's the way it is. And population density aside, London has a much higher concentration of newsmaking entities (eg. Parliament, the City (financial district), many cultural/arts organisations). I understand the frustration people living in, say, Manchester or Birmingham feel about the London-centric news but the fact is that very little happens in your cities which is of national significance.

Re:London bias

[91degrees]

Which means it makes sense to focus on things that are happening in London exclusively, but this only affects those people who actually live in London, has affected more people than that overt the past 3 years and will affect even more in upcoming months.

Re:London bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, thanks for your insightful post! None of us ever realised that the original post, and then the post you were replying to, were actually saying EXACTLY THIS!

Re:London bias

[Anonymous Coward]

All these miserable non-Londoners complaining about stories about things happening in London making the news. The Crystal Palace transmitter serves a significant fraction of the population, so it is significant news, and it's not like you didn't get localised news when it happened to you. ... and somehow it's the Londoners that are supposedly miserable!

Now sod off!

Re:London bias

[Malc]

What? There's another country outside London? Is there anything worth seeing there?

Re:London bias

[Hognoxious]

The submitter probably thought it was something to do with censorship.

Re:London bias

[isorox]

The greater London area, those that commute in or are centred around there, makes up somewhere closer to a quarter of the population, maybe more. Most of the money in the UK is made in the capital and surrounding areas.

The UK is London-centric. Not just the media.

I don't live there any more (ex-pat) nor will I when I move back to the UK later this year, but it's a bit of an unavoidable thing with Britain.

Those that commute from the north (Beds/Herts etc) lost ceefax last year. This week was only the turn off for 8 million people in London proper. The 52 million people in the rest of the UK have either already lost Ceefax, or still have it.

Yes, 75% of the country live outside of London and the vast 2 hour commuter belt. The BBC's finally acknowleged that the North West, while contributing 14% of the license fee, was only getting 3% of the fee put back in local coverage. They've opened a new base in Salford. They need to at the very least repeat that in the other English areas.

Far too many media-luvvies live in the south east, think that commuting via train is normal, and don't see the problem in setting a generic sitcom (Outumbered, My Hero, etc) in London rather than, say, a suburb of Exeter.

Re:London bias

[dkf]

The UK is London-centric.

London is extremely London-centric. (Seriously, they only really have proper regard for Paris, NYC and LA of everywhere else in the world.) They mistake this for thinking that they actually matter.

Re:London bias

[tehcyder]

I understand the frustration people living in, say, Manchester or Birmingham feel about the London-centric news but the fact is that very little happens in your cities which is of national significance.

Except riots and murders, of course. They'll always get a ton of coverage in the media.

Re:London bias

[robthebloke]

The M25 (a popular beauty spot) is the most popular destination with UK citizens, and of course there is the hill, and the pub. All 3 are worth a visit.

Re:London bias

[tehcyder]

Yeah, I've had enough with all this pro-London bias on Slashdot. How about some US news for a change?

What, London's not in the US?

Re:London bias

[Nursie]

Paris? Smells of piss.
LA? Sprawling mess with gangs and hollywood types.

Pah!

Londoners regard themselves as denizens of a city on a par with NY and Tokyo, and pretty much nowhere else. This has at times been borne out when currency fluctuations have temporarily made it the most expensive city and the world's largest financial centre.

Me, I think it's filthy and crowded.

Re:London bias

[tehcyder]

The submitter probably thought it was something to do with censorship.

"And so, with the brutal government closure of Ceefax, another glimmer of freedom in the darkness of British oppression fades away, and the UK moves inexorably towards Orwell's 1984. The question is, if the Limeys had the right to bear arms, would the Socialist government of David Cameronski dare to push their totalitarian surveillance vision so far? What do slashdotters think?"

Re:London bias

[gsslay]

You don't understand. Everyone in the UK either lives in London, or wishes they did, or is terribly fascinated by everything that happens there. That's because it's an paradise of exciting people and streets paved with gold.

Isn't London also having some kind of sporting event this summer? Why don't we ever hear more about that?

Re:London bias

[Dogtanian]

It's even worse in Scotland. A significant proportion of the allegedly "(UK) national" news just doesn't apply to us (*), but we get fed it anyway (but little news that applies specifically to us), and they might acknowledge that it only applies to England (or "England and Wales", though even that is less common since the Welsh Assembly came into being).

Granted, I accept that Scotland is far smaller in terms of population than England and that there's always going to be an imbalance, but it doesn't change the fact that much of the UK news is in fact English news. (News of (English) "nation"-wide education/policing/legal/NHS issues are still relevant to even a sheep farmer in Cumbria in a way that they'll never be to most Scottish viewers).

And then you get English people whining that Scotland, Wales, etc. get "special treatment" with their own news- blind to the fact that such things only stand out because the mainstream "UK" media *is* "English by default".

In fact, the situation is that Scotland gets the UK 6 o'clock news- including much that is irrelevant to us- followed by Scotland-wide (non-local) news that fills in the gaps to some extent. The English get the same 6 o'clock news- except that it's mostly relevant to them, so they don't *need* an England-specific bulletin- followed by half an hour of true local news (which Scotland doesn't get). But Scotland is getting "special" treatment and the better deal because it has its own news programme apparently. *cough*

(*) Scotland has a different legal system, a different education system, the Scottish NHS is entirely separate to the English one and policing is generally not affected by policy in England. This has increased since the Scottish Parliament came into existence, but has always been the case to some extent.

Re:London bias

[sa1lnr]

London Metropolitan area has approx 14 million population, which makes it about 20%.

Re:London bias

[91degrees]

Okay.... but why isn't it news when 70-75% of us lose Ceefax service but it is when 20% do?

Re:London bias

[couchslug]

"What, London's not in the US?"

It's been a province of the US since the Blair administration. (runs)

Re:London bias

[xaxa]

In fact, the situation is that Scotland gets the UK 6 o'clock news- including much that is irrelevant to us- followed by Scotland-wide (non-local) news that fills in the gaps to some extent. The English get the same 6 o'clock news- except that it's mostly relevant to them, so they don't *need* an England-specific bulletin- followed by half an hour of true local news (which Scotland doesn't get). But Scotland is getting "special" treatment and the better deal because it has its own news programme apparently. *cough*

Scotland has a population of 5.2 million.
London has a population of 7.8 million.
The West Midlands has 5.2 million.
The East Midlands has 4.1 million.

It seems Scotland gets a reasonably good deal for it's local news, if we assume the amount of newsworthy activity generated per person is similar.

(Note that London has it's own "parliament", the London Assembly.)

Re:London bias

[dkf]

Me, I think it's filthy and crowded.

The best thing they could do with London would be to relocate the whole of national government elsewhere, every last lock, stock and barrel.

Re:London bias

[Dogtanian]

It seems Scotland gets a reasonably good deal for it's local news, if we assume the amount of newsworthy activity generated per person is similar.

You're missing the point. Some people seem to think that Scotland is getting a *better* deal then England because we have our "own" news and the English regions don't. The fact is that this Scotland-wide news is instead of the true local news that England gets, and is only necessary because of an implicit Anglo-centrism in news output in the first place.

English viewers have *their* national Education, Health and Policing stories covered during the "UK" wide 6 o'clock news, leaving a full half hour for true local news at 6.30-7.00. Whereas in Scotland we get the same "UK" news which means significant parts of our time wasted with stories relating to *English* policy that doesn't apply to us, *then* a Scotland-wide bulletin from 6.30-7.00 covering many things, including those issues as they relate to Scotland.

Can you imagine the apoplexy of the typical Home Counties Radio 4 type if the "national" news covered Scotland-only education, etc. and then their (non-)local news later on had to be taken up covering that stuff properly?! Yeah, as said, I appreciate that Scotland is smaller than England, but the fact remains that Scotland does *not* get the better deal, it gets fed a lot of news that doesn't apply to it, forcing true "local" news to be replaced so we can get *our* reporting on those "national" issues. (And then the English complain that we're getting "special" treatment because we have our own national news, despite the fact that this is instead of the true local news they get, and despite the problem being caused by England-only stories in the first place!)

No, I don't expect English viewers/listeners to be forced to listen to detailed descriptions of Scottish business, but I *will* happily condemn the BBC for rejecting "Scottish Six" (news) proposal- which would have addressed this problem- in the late 90s. The BBC bosses in London vetoed that, giving us instead the half-baked non-solution of a Scottish opt-out for the final 15 minutes of Newsnight on BBC2 at 11 PM(!!!)

Re:London bias

[Dogtanian]

Additional; Assembly or not, London doesn't- and didn't- have entirely separate education, policing, health or legal systems from the rest of England, and England-wide stories on those subjects are still applicable to it. In short, it's a red herring from the point-of-view I was arguing.

Re:London bias

[Pope]

It's in Southern Ontario, thank you very much!

Re:London bias

[jonbryce]

I am 25 minutes from London by train, but we had the digital switchover a while back. It is only people who actually live in London that had their analogue signal switched off.

Re:London bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we've been assimilating London one bridge at a time since 1971, so, why not?

Re:London bias

[xaxa]

You're missing the point.

Agreed. I now agree with you.

But I think a lot of people complain about the news being "London centric" when it isn't really. The actual London-centric news is about public transport, the mayor, schools, knife crime etc, and people outside SE England are rarely aware of much of this.

English viewers have *their* national Education, Health and Policing stories covered during the "UK" wide 6 o'clock news

Although, Scottish MPs do get to vote on those matters...

Re:London bias

[Dogtanian]

Although, Scottish MPs do get to vote on those matters...

True, and I disagree with this in principle.

Re:London bias

[91degrees]

A friend of mine received an email that said something along the lines of "If you haven't seen out advertising in and around London, where have you been!?"



Since her answer was "Glasgow" she felt the question was a little unfair.

The earliest "digital" mass service

[Animats]

I'm amazed Ceefax was still up. It wasn't even interactive, but it was "digital". There were other systems from that era, such as Prestel (UK, a flop), Minitel (France, a big success), and NAPLPS (North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax), still used by some gambling terminals that need to send graphics over slow dedicated lines).

None of the pre-PC era stuff ever caught on in the US. France Telecom deployed dial-up Minitel service in the US, but it was used by few Americans. QUBE, a cable TV based system, was deployed in Columbus, OH. But that was about it until the PC era.

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[dredwerker]

I'm amazed Ceefax was still up. It wasn't even interactive, but it was "digital". There were other systems from that era, such as Prestel (UK, a flop), Minitel (France, a big success), and NAPLPS (North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax), still used by some gambling terminals that need to send graphics over slow dedicated lines).

None of the pre-PC era stuff ever caught on in the US. France Telecom deployed dial-up Minitel service in the US, but it was used by few Americans. QUBE, a cable TV based system, was deployed in Columbus, OH. But that was about it until the PC era.

Minitel was a big success as far as I remember as people were given minitel terminals.

From wikipedia:

"Millions of terminals were handed out free to telephone subscribers, resulting in a high penetration rate among businesses and the public. In exchange for the terminal, the possessors of Minitel would not be given free "white page" printed directories (alphabetical list of residents and firms), but only the yellow pages (classified commercial listings, with advertisements); the white pages were accessible for free on Minitel, and they could be searched by a reasonably intelligent search engine; much faster than flipping through a paper directory."

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[Nursie]

Eh?

It was too interactive, did you never press the 'reveal' button to see the answers to a quiz?

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[Anonymous Coward]

Prestel wasn't a flop, it ran for years! I still have my old 1200/75 bps modem! Erm the very nature of Ceefax meant it was interactive...

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[TheRaven64]

There were also occasionally some story puzzles split over a lot of pages. You'd solve a puzzle and then the solution would be the next page number. You'd enter that and go onto the next part of the story.

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[Anonymous Coward]

A pal from school had a stereo tv in the early 80's - despite no stereo broadcasts!
It also had a thermal printer that could print out ceefax pages...

He also had an Atari 2600 - According to my mum he had no sister, but I did - apparently this made me better off...

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[gigatux]

Ceefax (or equivalents on other, non BBC channels) were indeed interactive. I have played quite a few games via this service which basically involved you dialling a number and navigating to the page you get told on the phone. From there, you can press buttons on the phone and watch the content change within a second later.

There were even one or two banks that allowed for online banking via Teletext (ITV's equivalent to Ceefax). If you couldn't afford the phone bill, it was always fun to navigate to pages blindly to see information on other peoples' accounts, so it arguably wasn't the best idea!

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume "Ceefax" is what shows when you press the "TXT" button on the remote, i.e. Teletext. That's as interactive as a book. The "reveal" button just shows characters that are broadcast with a "hidden" bit and therefore not shown initially.

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[havana9]

Minitel and videotext systems were cheaps terminals that used the phone lines to send and transmit data. Ceefax and teletext systems are data transmission on television signals. Teletext is compatible with digital television and almost all DVB decoders could either process the data stream internally and display it or add the codified data on the PAL or SECAM video signal to be displayed on a standard definition TV set. Other european nations mantained the Teletext system on DBV broadcasting,for instance Italy: http://www.televideo.rai.it/televideo/pub/pagina.jsp?p=101&idmenumain=1

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[bickerdyke]

Minitel was a big success as far as I remember as people were given minitel terminals.

From wikipedia:

"Millions of terminals were handed out free to telephone subscribers, resulting in a high penetration rate among businesses and the public. In exchange for the terminal, the possessors of Minitel would not be given free "white page" printed directories (alphabetical list of residents and firms), but only the yellow pages (classified commercial listings, with advertisements); the white pages were accessible for free on Minitel, and they could be searched by a reasonably intelligent search engine; much faster than flipping through a paper directory."

If that doesn't sound like a win-win situation.

Phone company pushing their system into market
No more phonebooks clogging your mailbox
free minitel device
search engine access to the phone directory

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[robthebloke]

Ceefax (see-facts) was the BBC service, Teletext is the protocol. Interactive teletext came later.....

Re:The earliest "digital" mass service

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember playing with something similar on the tv we had (in the US). Problem was there was only one channel that actually broadcast anything with it. Think it was TBS. It was kind of cool and much like the system they are describing here. Second problem was very few TV's actually had the functionality...

Unfortunately the replacement service is far worse

[MROD]

The most unfortunate part of the whole affair is that the "more advanced" digital service which is replacing the old teletext system is actually less useful and feels slower than what it replaces.

The old system may have been text only (except for some block colour "graphics") and take a while for each page to be transmitted but it was clear and easy to read. Also, the art of providing content in the limited text space available had become an art and hence the content itself was good.

The new system which replaces it take an age to start up (up to a minute) as opposed to the almost instant teletext system and because it only uses the right-hand third of the screen to display in (most of the time) has less space for information. If you add to this the fact that the only reasonable way to navigate to pages is via a deep menu system of pages (each page taking up to 30 seconds to load), rather than being able to memorise a three digit number for the page, it becomes too painful to actually use at all.

Character-based art

[TwentyCharsIsNotEnou]

What I'll really miss is the character-based graphics - it was a nostalgic reminder of when drawing something on a computer required serious planning and optimisations!

Cheap holidays

[pilybaby]

Where am I supposed to go now if I want to find cheap flights abroard!?!?

Re:Cheap holidays

[dredwerker]

Where am I supposed to go now if I want to find cheap flights abroard!?!?

:)

I am still amazed that people look at this nonsense waiting for it to change page. Its like Luddite heaven.

Re:Cheap holidays

[wild_quinine]

Where am I supposed to go now if I want to find cheap flights abroard!?!?

My parents actually used to get some genuinely good deals on channel tunnel crossings from those pages.

Re:Cheap holidays

[bigdave42]

http://www.teletextholidays.co.uk/

Re:Cheap holidays

[Anonymous Coward]

As Viz Top Tips puts it: "Miss CEEFAX? Print web pages in a big font on a broken printer and then stick the pages onto tortoises doing laps of your lounge"

.

digital teletext is possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to be a normal teletext system like vidoetext in Germany which as opposed to ceefax survived the switch to digital.

Re:digital teletext is possible

[pe1chl]

Yes, the cutoff of Ceefax appears to be politically or financially motivated, certainly not technically.
The DVB system for digital TV transmission supports Teletext (Ceefax) just fine.

Re:digital teletext is possible

[Big Nemo '60]

Were I live (Italy) we switched to DGTV some time ago, and last time I checked, Teletext was working just fine (for the few channels still running it, mostly the three main public channels). I agree, must be a political decision.

On the other side, I tried MHP (which should replace Teletext among other things) some time ago and IMHO it was terrible. The decoders I have now do not support MHP - MHP-enabled models are more expensive - maybe the service improved in the meantime, at least I hope so.

Re:digital teletext is possible

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I used Teletext when I was in Scotland (using SkyTV). Am I mistaken?

Re:digital teletext is possible

[dave420]

It's just old and superseded. "Time" is the only motivation. We have better technology that more people use, which is a better use of money.

Re:digital teletext is possible

[Anonymous Coward]

New Zealander reporting in - likewise. Our Teletext system (again, looks like the exact same blocky-graphics technology) migrated accross to Freeview perfectly fine.

(If anything, it's faster and more reliable than before! Much faster than any java based stuff.)

So, yes, this is a political / didn't want to spend the money thing; not a technological one.

Re:digital teletext is possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Were I live (Italy) we switched to DGTV some time ago

Maybe your part of Italy, but not all of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television_transition
Italy previously scheduled its blackout to occur in late 2006 but was delayed to Wednesday, 12 December 2012, as enacted by Italian law ("Legge 29 novembre 2007, n. 222"). This might be because as of 2010, still 21% of Italy used analogue terrestrial to watch TV - the highest demand in the whole of Europe.

Re:digital teletext is possible

[Anonymous Coward]

No, early generations of Sky box could actually encode a teletext signal into the video output so that teletext would work as usual. The teletext data had been encoded alongside the MPEG video, and it was reconstructed within the box itself. This is a big clue to the importance of teletext at the time. Users wanted to carry on using it, even after upgrading to digital satellite with its notionally superior "red button" features.

More Nostalgia

[csrster]

Joke all you like, but when ceefax started up it was the first time in our lives we had had access to up-to-the-minute news and other information on demand. We still have it here in Denmark although it's been a long while since I used it for anything other than subtitles.

Re:More Nostalgia

[MadKeithV]

It's worth it just for the subtitles - I often switch on the beeb and immediately turn Ceefax/teletext to page 888 for those in the living room that aren't comfortable enough with native English to be able follow the shows by audio only.

Re:More Nostalgia

[wonkey_monkey]

If I remember correctly, 888 will continue to be broadcast and inserted into video output of satellite/terrestrial set-top boxes, at least on BBC and ITV.

Re:More Nostalgia

[Stompehh]

Every freeview box and TV with it built in that I've ever seen has had a subtitles function (usually a dedicated button on the remote). The digital subtitle text is much sharper and easier to read .

Jealous Canadian

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first saw the ceefax system when visiting Britain I was very jealous. I was glad to use it to book a flight back for 107 pounds though!

Online shopping, weather, sports scores, flight/hotel sales, ski conditions around the world and best of all... you put all that small type from the tv ads on ceefax pages (whereas in North America we had useless small text scrolling by at incredible speeds ).

You had that all since the '70's .. and here in North America we still can't read the small print... although in some cases they can refer to magazine ads or the internet.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[jpapon]

The real question is why is anyone still getting their news this way?

Funny

[Grindalf]

Mine is still on, the news is updated in real time, not like the stupid html one that does not work properly. :0)

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Hognoxious]

Here's the BBCs "what's on" page. Absolute bag of arse. http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/guide. It was a lot quicker to look it up on ceefax. By the time you've walked over to the computer, waited for the page to load (if it does at all), navigate to the right date & time the programme you were looking for is finished. And what about people who don't have intarwebs?

The rest of the website is largely content free, just links to videos that spin for 20 minutes and then decide not to to play because you're in the wrong country.

This is the absolute non-story of the week

[Chrisq]

Real headline:

Millions of "Brits" have already had the old-fashioned Cefax replaced by the newer freeview information services. Journalists only just notice because it's London's turn now.

Re:This is the absolute non-story of the week

[makomk]

Newer and less useful - it actually has less information than the "old-fashioned" Ceefax and worse information density - they can fit about 1 paragraph of a news story or 5 headlines of the index on screen at a time, compared to 4 paragraphs or the whole index with Ceefax, and most of the pages didn't make it in the switchover.

Re:This is the absolute non-story of the week

[Chrisq]

Newer and less useful - it actually has less information than the "old-fashioned" Ceefax and worse information density - they can fit about 1 paragraph of a news story or 5 headlines of the index on screen at a time, compared to 4 paragraphs or the whole index with Ceefax, and most of the pages didn't make it in the switchover.

I would put that down to style rather than capabilities, they seem to have gone with sparse screens with a lot of sub-pages.

Re:This is the absolute non-story of the week

[itsdapead]

I would put that down to style rather than capabilities, they seem to have gone with sparse screens with a lot of sub-pages.

Probably because it is designed to be read from a distance and not assume that everybody has a 50" HD telly, while still accommodating picture-in-picture so you can browse and watch telly. Also, when Ceefax started in the 70s it was a unique way to get continuously updated news. The new digital service, since its inception, has been targeting an increasingly narrow niche between the web and 24-hour news channels, and will soon be obsoleted by news apps on smart TVs.

The main problem is that it has been blighted by piss-poor implementations on some receivers. Also, its pretty clear that the funding has been continuously salami-sliced over the last 10 years or so, even for Ceefax (and the ITV version, Teletext, packed up years ago). In comparison, Teletext sets had been getting quite smart - caching commonly visited pages and sub-pages to speed up access.

Re:This is the absolute non-story of the week

[Chrisq]

Teletext sets had been getting quite smart - caching commonly visited pages and sub-pages to speed up access.

With the cost of memory now I'm not sure why they didn't just cache the lot. Still its a moot point now.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[pe1chl]

I think you are discussing implementation in your particular equipment, not features of the system.
When teletext first appeared, its limitation were the same. You could type in a page number and then
you needed to wait some 30 seconds before it appeared in the carroussel and you got it on screen.
But then, TV sets appeared that loaded pages in memory ahead of them being requested. First a limited
system with 4 or 8 "related" pages being loaded, later the entire page repertoire was kept in memory for
instant recall. Apparently you have such a set and teletext is instaneous for you.
But any followup system (that is not interactive) could do the same thing. Apparently your new device
does not have the memory capacity or cleverness to do this, but a better device could be built that operates
the same way as your teletext set.

Here is a better link

[Chrisq]

FAQ Teletext has some good pictures showing the replacement.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[91degrees]

My dad is addicted to the FTSE share prices. All the information is on one page and updated frequently. He found it useful to have it on at all times while at home.

Cricket matches were updated in the same way. It works well for brief information that you want to consult regularly.

'millions' - 'lost'?

[Anonymous Coward]

u you mean potentially, theoretically, - maybe. seriously though, who cares? who was using that service? arguably a waste of money...
as the writer says 'since the 70s' exactly...

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[cardpuncher]

If you remember Ceefax back in its original form when TVs would typically have 7 1Kbit RAM chips to store one single page of data, it could take a considerable age for the page you wanted to arrive - pages weren't transmitted sequentially, but popular pages were transmitted more frequently to improve their access time, at the cost of significant delays to other content.

It's only later incarnations of TVs that had much more memory and could cache pages (helped by the hinting of the coloured button cues) that made Ceefax acceptably responsive.

The same is true of the MHEG service that replaces Ceefax on (some) digital platforms - if the TV caches the carousels as they come past rather than awaiting their next transmission (and provided the TV has a reasonable CPU) it's actually quite quick. Early integrated TVs (and cheap STBs) don't have the memory or horsepower to do this.

The replacement service is much less comprehensive, though. This is partly because there's relatively little bandwidth allocated to the data channel (at least on Freeview), partly because the content has to be disseminated through incompatible platforms (Sky, for example, uses OpenTV rather than MHEG for "red button" services) which means the editorial process is a bit more complicated than it was for Ceefax - but mostly because far more comprehensive information is available via the Internet...

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[MROD]

I've tried using the new text service on a number of systems, both low-end and high-end and both Freeview and Freesat. They're all as tardy.

Indeed, early teletext was pretty slow (but it was fun watching the page numbers fly by at the top right of the screen). However, with the advent of the "Fastext" page caching system, the initial page was fast enough and far faster than the new system. (And I do remember the original implementation too, having played with a teletext TV in the local library when the service first started in the mid-'70s.

Why let it die..

[hantms]

Interestingly, in other countries the intention seems to be to keep this text service around. And the design, with bright colors and blocky graphics is almost cool again..

See this article on the Dutch version, that's been in operation 32 years now. (30 at the time of writing the article). It's Google translated, but it turned out reasonably well: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fvk%2Fnl%2F2694%2FMedia%2Farticle%2Fdetail%2F986259%2F2010%2F04%2F01%2FTeletekst-is-30-jaar-en-springlevend.dhtml&act=url

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[MROD]

Other than the usability design issues and the speed, I do miss the comprehensiveness of the old service. The web system is not an ideal replacement as it requires me to change to a different device, possibly even boot it up and wait for that. (Oh, and the usability of the BBC's web site is poor as well. Style over content rules.)

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[gazbo]

An example of the block graphics: German Teletext porn!

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[itsdapead]

If you add to this the fact that the only reasonable way to navigate to pages is via a deep menu system of pages (each page taking up to 30 seconds to load), rather than being able to memorise a three digit number for the page, it becomes too painful to actually use at all.

Not true - at least on the BBC service you can navigate between the main sections using page numbers (they're actually vaguely compatible with the old Ceefax numbers - 102 for news, 300 for sport etc.)

Also, the speed issue is down to bad implementations on some hardware. On My first digital TV, a Phillips widescreen CRT (relatively early for a integrated digital TV) it was buggy and unusable, and I wouldoften switch back to analog to use Ceefax or Teletext. My newer Samsung LCD does it properly and gives a service that is much better than the old system. The split screen works wellon modern large, widescreen, hi def TVs.

They haven't lost it

[DrXym]

DVB-T / DVB-S boxes support MHEG-5 multimedia content and both the BBC and ITV have digital equivalents to Ceefax / Teletext. MHEG-5 is a declarative layout language that can combine video, graphics, text and other elements. It's interactive enough for simple games and for navigation. It can also host program streams as part of the page and even tune to different program streams within a transport. The BBC usually puts this to good effect e.g. for Wimbledon they set up different live streams for different matches and you could switch between them interactively. I expect that London 2012 Olympics will see them build out something even bigger so you can flip between events, see scores etc.

The disadvantage of MHEG-5 is it's still a bit shit as a language and many DVB-T / DVB-S boxes are so underpowered that it takes ages for the page to render properly. Additionally pages are also delivered up carousel style so you might have to wait a while for the page you're after to be sent over the signal. Ceefax was carousel style too (cycling through numbers from 100 to 999) but the content was so small that most modern TVs were able to cache everything as it passed through making it quite fast.

Re:They haven't lost it

[wonkey_monkey]

Not only that but DVB-T/DVB-S can and do receive/insert real teletext into their video output - page 888, for example, still plays host to a teletext subtitle feed.

Re:They haven't lost it

[DrXym]

DVB has subs as part of its standard. Data comes in its own stream as bitmaps. I assume some channels are doing it the old way for legacy reasons or save a little space but they don't need to. It's even possible to have subs in different languages but there aren't many channels aside from Euronews where this happens.

Re:They haven't lost it

[wonkey_monkey]

There may still be those being cable-fed with modulated analogue versions of digital channels from a distribution cupboard (happens at my place if you don't have satellite, because there's no terrestrial reception behind the hill), and other cases where 888 subs are relied upon.

Re:They haven't lost it

[mfraz74]

I'm sure they used to do things to speed it up like sending the most viewed pages more often and I've seen some services - ARTE for example - where the pages counted down rather than up, but they also showed messages instead of the clock too. ISTR there were some extensions to the original teletext that would allow up to 4096 colours and other special effects.

We "lost" Ceefax in December 2009

[Anonymous Coward]

And there wasn't a single comment on the passing of a useful service. The "Red Button" service is crap in comparison, and the area given up to the current channel picture is far too large and restricts the amount of information that can be displayed in the third of the screen allocated to the "digital teletext". Its also slow and the content is limited. Yes, there's all sorts of wonderful interactive services online, some of which can be easily monetised, but if I'm watching the TV, then I'm not going to bugger about with a PC to get something I used to be able to get from the comfort of my armchair.

But now LONDON has had its analogue service switched off, we get the sad goodbye to Ceefax.

Self-centered morons.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Midnight Thunder]

Maybe the solution is to include a web browser in the TV? Many TVs are Linux based and require an Internet connection for updates, so why not go a step further? Sure it would probably mean needing to provide a keyboard with the TV or pages customised for navigation on a TV.

BTW does anyone know whether there is any method of providing the URL of the TV channel in the broadcast stream?

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[MROD]

The new service's "page numbers" are not consistent in any way, however, which is why I said "the only reasonable way to navigate to pages is via a deep menu system of pages".

It is true that many of them are similar to the old Ceefax numbers, however, the system only seems to have numbers for the index pages for sections rather than sub-pages. It's also a darn more tedious system to use.

As for speed, you may see a comment to another comment made above, I've used lots of equipment and it's all seemed just as cumbersome. This is Freeview and Freesat and low and high end equipment.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Mr Z]

What amazes me is that the broadcast model ever worked at all for something like Ceefax. Caching apparently made it even more practical, but still, the amount of bandwidth dedicated to the service is barely line noise compared to what's available today. By my calculations, it was managing over 600kbps in its final form (reading a spec from 2003), but it had to send the whole catalog repeatedly, so you had to wait for the useful bits to come by, limiting the total size of what Ceefax could offer.

So, if the modern day equivalent is loading more slowly and providing less, then it's due to a clear lack of caring at all about the service, I'd say than anything about the technology. There's more than enough bandwidth available, and you don't have to constantly replay all the content for everybody on the hopes that anybody would see it, like the broadcast model. You only have to serve it on demand.

Bamboozle

[Necroloth]

Goodbye Bamboozle... I used to love the special themes and as a kid, this was a great game to play with my siblings.

Re:Bamboozle

[ledow]

There's an app for that. At least, on Android.

Not quite the same, though.

Re:Bamboozle

[wonkey_monkey]

Bamboozle was interesting in that it made use of hexadecimal page numbers to store the quiz pages, so you couldn't just navigate around with the remote (you could, however, with a BBC Micro and a Teletext receiver :) )

Re:Bamboozle

[isorox]

Goodbye Bamboozle... I used to love the special themes and as a kid, this was a great game to play with my siblings.

Bamboozle used hexadecimal page numbers, the first time that many kids will be aware of a base system other than 10. Ceefax was a system made by geeks, and does the job brilliantly. It's a joy to use, and the systems behind it are a lot easier for journalists to update. And with only 40x25 characters, it meant news stories were properly subbed, not just copies of press releases.

Re:Bamboozle

[unenviabletask]

Loved the pixel faces and crappy graphics. Made good use of the colour buttons too!

Re:Bamboozle

[LordSnooty]

To this day you can see the effect on BBC News stories on the web - notice how the first 100 words give a summary of the entire story with additional information in the rest of the article. Obviously that's good, concise journalism but it's also done so that the first 100 words (or even the first sentence) can be lopped off and placed into a medium where space is limited.

Re:Bamboozle

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the one on ITV's Teletext? That was turned off in 2009?

What does this have to do with Londoners losing analogue telly (and hence ceefax)?

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[itsdapead]

The real question is why is anyone still getting their news this way?

Because if you want to check the news headlines, travel news, sports results or TV listings (on analogue) while sitting in the comfy chair with a cup of tea and a biscuit, Teletext does the job rather well. You don't need to get up and turn on the computer or get biscuit-y fingerprints over your tablet/laptop, and even if your new smart TV has a web browser, web pages are mostly desiged for use on a computer screen with a mouse.

Oh, yes, and since its been around since the 1970s (when it really was cutting edge) so people are in the habit of using it. The content has been going downhill for the last ten years, and one of the main services closed completely, though.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[pe1chl]

So what you are saying is that today's equipment manufacturers are not as capable as the guys in the past were.
Even with all the CPU power and memory they have available they are not able to code a decently performing system.
They probably have different priorities than a fast and slick result, today.

With a capable design team, it should be possible to design a well working digital broadcast news system, even today.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[pe1chl]

That is the HBBTV system.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[cardpuncher]

Indeed, and it is slated to be included in the next generation of the Freesat (UK free-to-air satellite) specs, along with MHEG for backwards compatibility.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[MROD]

Well, my only comment on how modern, high-speed equipment is slower:

Time to boot into a usable state to start programming:

BBC Micro: 2 seconds.
Dual, quad-core Xeon processor PC running Windows 7: 2 minutes. ;-)

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Anonymous Coward]

"feels slower than what it replaces"

That's probably those new-fangled adverts loading.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[rklrkl]

When I got my first "digital teletext" TV set years ago, I was appalled at how slow it was to load pages up compared to the fairly fast analogue teletext. Of course, later analogue teletext sets had "tricks" like large page caches that would save almost every page that was transmitted (including sub-pages) so it would feel near-instant, but even ones without a cache were quite fast and you could see the page cycling counter progress so you knew roughly when it would turn up.

One neat trick analogue teletext pages had was a "overlay page number on top-right of live TV screen if the page changes", so you could put it on the main news or sports pages, go back to your live TV feed and if a new article broke, you'd be flagged of a page update and one button press got you straight to the index page you'd left it on. Sadly, it was ruined by sub-pages which changed every 30 secs, so I had to give up on that :-(

Having had 2 digital teletext sets with equally slow navigation/display of pages, I was despairing at how rotten the new "replacement" service for analogue teletext was. However, I picked up a Technika Smartbox 8320HD from Tesco (company who make it are in administration - shows you how popular it was!) and it *flies* through every single page - literally instant navigation, which is presumably with a clever cache system. It now actually makes digital teletext a bit more bearable, but there's still snags with BBC's digital teletext:

* It seems to only be on selected digital BBC SD channels. It's not on channel 301 ("red button") and not on their two HD channels either! Not sure why.

* It seems to have far less content than the old Ceefax system.

* It's often slower to update live sports scores than the old Ceefax system.

* There's no option to go fullscreen teletext (and back to a right-hand column overlay with picture-in-picture in the top-left or if it's an article, the fullscreen live TV feed underneath), so news articles are squashed in a narrow column and needlessly go over 2 or more sub-pages.

* Some pages go fullscreen and cut the picture-in-picture out completely, whilst others stick to the narrow column version - it seems quite inconsistent and should really be up to the viewer to pick their display layout.

* It still only transmits plain text (with the occasional, but rare, coloured text) and is actually less "graphical" than the old analogue teletext!

I originally thought it was a downgrade myself and still do.

Alive in Finland

[MacroRodent]

Were I live (Italy) we switched to DGTV some time ago, and last time I checked, Teletext was working just fine

Same thing in Finland. It is actually still quite popular, many years after the digital switch-over. If you have your TV already on, it is the fastest way to peek at the latest headlines or weather report. Another popular application seems to be horse racing scores. Kiosks selling bets almost always have a TV constantly showing Teletext at the relevant page. Works without any net connection.

A nice result of the Teletext limitations is that the pages show just the data without fancy formatting, and whoever creates the content must make the best of the limited space, choosing words carefully. This means the system is really very efficient for the reader, you don't have to wade over fluff... (unfortunately because of the way the pages are rotated in the transmission, you may have to wait a bit until your page comes up, unless your receiver implements good caching. Old implementations did not, and that made reading slow.).

Re:We may have lost Ceefax...

[Chrisq]

...but at least our country isn't run by a nigger!

Id rather a nigger than a toff.

Don't worry - with Win 8 tiles...

[Viol8]

... you'll be able to recreate your favourite graphics on your PC desktop soon!

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Anonymous Coward]

I just opened the page you refer to and it's one of the best "what's on" type of pages I've seen. Much better than the old teletext version. All the channels are visible on one screen, future programs are listed, programs currently broadcast are highlighted... what problem could you possibly have with it?

The B ark

[Hognoxious]

1/3 of the population lives in London or the South-East. This isn't a good thing

Yes it is, it means the other 2/3 don't have to put up with a load of shandy-drinking wankers.

Re:The B ark

[Inda]

Haven't you got whippets and pigeons to feed, northern monkey?

Re:The B ark

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's to hide the taste of the swill you Southerners call beer.

Just out of shot of every scene where Bear Grylls drinks water wrung from dung, blood from a dead animal, or his own pee, is a pub serving ale Southern Style, aka mill pond flat and cloudy. Not even he will drink it.

Re:The B ark

[Anonymous Coward]

And what is that? What beer do northeners drink? I see a lot of pubs in the north selling beers, or rather largers, that are sold down south. Stella, fosters, becks, carlsberg, kronenberg et al. I've had some very nice ales in the south, London especially has a lot of pubs round the city that have some very good ales. What do you call beer, please tell me I'm interested in your terrible opinion about beer drinking down south

Re:The B ark

[dkf]

I've had some very nice ales in the south, London especially has a lot of pubs round the city that have some very good ales.

I'm happy to grant that there's good beers brewed in London, but would point out that there's good beer brewed all round the country. Alas, there's a lot of rubbish about too; I'm not sure if the worst beer I ever had was in London or Manchester, but it managed to be worse than the average standard you get in the US (whoever it was that was to blame, they'd made something worse than a warm Bud...) My favourites are usually the ones you get in a small country pub that you've never heard of before; sometimes they're better than other times, but the variation in the microbrewery output remains interesting.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[digitig]

So what you are saying is that today's equipment manufacturers are not as capable as the guys in the past were.

No. Today's equipment manufacturers don't see this as a feature for which they could charge a premium, so it's not worth R&D investment.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Malc]

Became irrelevant with modern Freeview/Freesat devices and their superior (and faster) EPG.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Gordonjcp]

Or to put it another way, "Boooooooop Beep"...
I wonder how many people heard the exact noise in their head just reading that? Everyone who went to school in the UK in the 80s, I suppose.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[serviscope_minor]

The old system may have been text only (except for some block colour "graphics")

It was pure text only: the "graphics" were just character cell graphics. The control codes also took up an entire character cell and rendered as blank, so unlike VTxx codes, the screen took exactly the same amount of memory (about 1k) regardless of the content. It also made the ciruitry simple since the RAM scan speed was constant.

I haven't written for teletext in years (the BBC micro had a teletext mode), but I still remember that 141 is the code for double height text. Not sure how that's ever going to come in use ever again...

The new system which replaces it take an age to start up (up to a minute) as opposed to the almost instant teletext system and because it only uses the right-hand third of the screen to display in (most of the time) has less space for information. If you add to this the fact that the only reasonable way to navigate to pages is via a deep menu system of pages (each page taking up to 30 seconds to load), rather than being able to memorise a three digit number for the page, it becomes too painful to actually use at all.

It's amazing how newer faster technology is abused to the point where it becomes a regression. The original teletext sets could be quite slow, as you had to wait for your page to be broadcast as it could only send 50 pages per second (out of 1000), and would send some common pages much more frequently than rare ones. That said at the time in the distant past when 1M of memory became cheap, sets started caching the entire thing in memory making it essentially instant.

Its content that matters , not presentation

[Viol8]

For simple textual information teletext works fine. You don't need 32 bit colour graphics and a 1Ghz processor for that sort of thing. You might call people who understand that concept luddites, they'd probably call you one of the Ooo shiny! crowd and laugh.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Hognoxious]

You can't stuff a metric fuckton of ajax, javascript & flash into teletext, that's why.

Digital text

[tehcyder]

is awful in my experience. It's so slow you might as well use your phone, tablet, netbook or whatever is to hand and access the internet properly.

RIP Ceefax, you were an invaluablel resource in the times before most people had access the internet.

Re:Digital text

[isorox]

is awful in my experience. It's so slow you might as well use your phone, tablet, netbook or whatever is to hand and access the internet properly.

Unless you have a TV from post 1998, which caches all the pages. MythTV does it too, if you use an analog capture card which presents VBI.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[itsdapead]

I've used lots of equipment and it's all seemed just as cumbersome.

YMMV. There's clearly a problem here, but its in the implementation rather than the system. Based on my previous TV I'd have agreed with you completely (that TV also had a very good analogue "Fasttext" implementation which cached sub-pages and often-visited pages for smooth browsing) . My current TV works perfectly and I haven't used analogue teletext since I bought it. I suspect there's not enough demand to make it worth manufacturers spending time on, with only the BBC offering any significant content, and EPG functionality moved elsewhere.

Re:We may have lost Ceefax...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least that toff isn't a seppo.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[RoboJ1M]

>Chain ""

Loading: 00

beeee... (continue, very long beep)

MAAARGH (ear destroying wail)

Loading: 01

beeee... (continue, very long beep)

MAAARGH (ear destroying wail)

Block.

Please rewind tape.

You know you know the noise.

And also there was that soft ticking somewhere in there two, a relay I guess.

OK, now somebody do a 5 1/4 " floppy with a disk read error.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[tehcyder]

The real question is why is anyone still getting their news this way?

I'd rather have the BBC news on teletext than some random internet news blog.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[mikechant]

and feels slower than what it replaces.

My experience is that it depends - using cheapo freeview boxes it was appallingly slow; using integrated digital TVs it's now *really* snappy. Probably depends on the signal quality as well (our signal quality is very high now the analogue's turned off and they've boosted the digital output).

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[AmiMoJo]

I guess you have an older/cheaper Freeview box. The better ones have a large memory to cache the data. On my 2012 Panasonic TV the pages come up instantly.

This is exactly the same as Ceefax. Early decoders had to wait for each page to be broadcast so could take a minute or more to display a page. Newer ones simply caches the pages in RAM for instant display.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Dogtanian]

I was appalled at how slow it was to load pages up compared to the fairly fast analogue teletext.

This always strikes me as an ironic expression considering that Teletext was probably one of (if not *the*) first widespread consumer-oriented *digital* services, as were its digital electronics in the mid-70s, before even the first-generation personal computers like the Apple II and Commodore Pet were out!

In your case, I assume you knew Teletext was digital and it was just unfortunate phrasing, but I sometimes wonder if this is the case for people who say "analogue Teletext" in general, or if they really don't realise that Teletext is- and always was- digital, even if it was piggybacked onto a system for transmitting analogue video.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Dogtanian]

An example of the block graphics: German Teletext porn!

There's a notorious example in Britain of one disgruntled writer who slipped in what appeared to be a surreptitious "money shot" (NSFW?!) into the childrens' pages :-O

Re:We may have lost Ceefax...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote in Trevor McDonald and you'd have both. Seriously I have never seen a black guy so ill at ease with the Jazz players, yet so obviously at home discussing thousand-dollar debutante dresses with the white elite New Orleans millionaires as Sir Trevor.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[MROD]

How's about?

> LOAD "MYPROG"
Brrrrrrrrr
Click-click-click-click-click-click-click clunk
Brrrrrrrrr, brrrrrrrr. clunk
Brrrrrrrrr, brrrrrrrr. clunk
Brrrrrrrrr, brrrrrrrr. clunk

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[spike1]

"Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!""

Spooky. When I was reading your comment the thought of the hitchhiker's guide series vs film graphics sprang to mind.
The graphics in the original series from the late 70s were far better, funnier and flashier than the crap ones in the recent film.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[DrXym]

My father in law still uses the Irish equivalent to Ceefax called Aertel for horse racing results. He has no computer and it's easy to punch the page number in and get live results.

Don't know what he would do if Aertel goes but I assume the MHEG-5 replacement would offer something analogous even if it is accessed some other way.

So why are you using a web browser and not ceefax?

[fantomas]

But if it's superior to digital alternatives, why are you posting this on a website and not a ceefax tool?

  Presumably you also use the web for information retrieval: how does Ceefax compare to the web with respect to the points you make in your post?

Re:So why are you using a web browser and not ceef

[MROD]

It's different horses for different courses.

Teletext, by definition, is a broadcast medium, the web interactive. Sometimes you just "want the facts Ma'am" in a simple manner, sometimes you want something you can interact with and have flashy graphics.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[hendridm]

Those Germans think of everything!

rember Keyfax Nite-Owl or Sports Plus Network?

[Joe_Dragon]

remember Keyfax Nite-Owl or The Sports Plus Network that was shown on SportsChannel in the down time.

At least we still have the WeatherSTAR and IntelliStar

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[makomk]

Freeview's a lot more bandwidth-stingy than analog ever was - think 3 Mbit/s average for video in many cases, as low as 2 in some cases - and they're hardly going to allocate 600kbps just to interactive text services. I mean, they could fit 3 radio channels or a quarter of a TV channel in that easily. Also, digital text services on Freeview do just send the entire catalog repeatedly (though they call it a MHEG carousel) and so you do still have to wait for the useful bits to come by in the same way as with Ceefax.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Anonymous Coward]

The most unfortunate part of the whole affair is that the "more advanced" digital service which is replacing the old teletext system is actually less useful and feels slower than what it replaces.

This "more advanced" replacement service being "the internet", right?

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[xaxa]

So, if the modern day equivalent is loading more slowly and providing less, then it's due to a clear lack of caring at all about the service, I'd say than anything about the technology. There's more than enough bandwidth available, and you don't have to constantly replay all the content for everybody on the hopes that anybody would see it, like the broadcast model. You only have to serve it on demand.

You do have to constantly replay it, it's still a broadcast model. In the digital TV stream (as implemented for DVB, but I assume it's pretty similar for the American thing) packets are broadcast, of which the vast majority are video/audio, a very few are the EPG (constantly repeated), and a few are "interactive" services (text, etc). There's nowhere for it to request data from, it's a listen-only broadcast service.

Who are the Britons?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bqQ-C1PSE

Ceefax fan T-shirt

[paj1234]

Here's one I made earlier:
http://www.pjc.me.uk/ceefax/

Minitel ending this year also

[billstewart]

Le Figaro reports that Minitel will be closing June 30, 2012. End of an era.

Back in the 80s a company I worked for made computers that could handle really large quantities of low-speed cooked-mode serial I/O, and while they turned out not to be the big-selling high-performance high-reliability systems the marketing slides thought they were, they were occasionally useful, and I think we sold some for Minitel.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Anonymous Coward]

bbc.co.uk/news is hardly a random internet news blog and you can still get the news on the digital text service.

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Anonymous Coward]

tvguide.co.uk is pretty good for an online tv guide. All freeview TVs/STBs have an EPG you can look up programs on, and there is still the digital text service. Now quit your whining. Your only problem would be if you got analog but can't get digital, but AFAIK they were going to boost the output of the digital signals with the analog switchoff (they didn't before because they didn't want the digital signals to interfere with the analog ones).

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[Anonymous Coward]

which means the editorial process is a bit more complicated than it was for Ceefax - but mostly because far more comprehensive information is available via the Internet...

I am told the BBC have an all-singing-all-dancing CMS that feeds the website, different flavours of digital text, mobile web and Ceefax automatically.

If you look at a typical BBC News web article, you will see stuff often repeated as weird summaries in blocks on the right hand of the screen as you read down. Sometimes the first few paragraphs will be an abridged form of the later article. This is because the editor has to submit different length wordings etc. so the automation can provide for these platforms.

On a good quality Freeview box, I have experienced simple text pages as pretty fast (a world ahead of what they were several years back). There are parts of the site though which cause you to 'tune out' of the channel you are watching, and this process takes a long time - generally the video-related content. I think the BBC have different priorities for what they wish to carry thesedays. Maybe there isn't a letters page anymore, but there will be 24 high definition video feeds of the Olympics (satellite and cable viewers only).

Re:Unfortunately the replacement service is far wo

[egnx]

The newer system doesn't include detailed local news and weather either - when fell walking in the Lake District I could look at teletext to instantly see how low the cloud would be, windspeed etc. you don't get that on the dumbed down national weather forecast or the regional weather pages. There used to be 10 pages of local news on Ceefax, that has gone too. Sure I can get this on the Internet but if I'm staying in a holiday cottage I probably dont have a connection.

Similar situation in the States

[jseale]

I remember being able to access a non-interactive weather info service from Kentucky Educational Television way back when (late 1980's at least). This service was aimed at farmers but had some weather info worth while to most people as well. It was accessed via a TeleCaption decoder or the built in caption decoder on your TV. This service went silent some time in 2005 if I'm not mistaken, just a few years before the USA made the digital switch.

relevance?

[ico2]

How many people were young/technical enough to use ceefax/teletext yet are not enough so now to have digital television?
Only a handful of elderly people remain using analogue TV services, let's assume an age range of 80+ covers almost the entirety of this group. Ceefax began in 1974, so this group were 42+ at the time. This technology would have been utterly unfamiliar at the time and provided no information that couldn't otherwise be acquired (in contrast to the internet, which eventually became the only source of many types of essential information), so uptake of it by people in this age range was probably relatively low.