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BBC Turns Off CEEFAX Service After 38 Years
Kittenman writes "After 38 years (1974 - 2012) the BBC's CEEFAX service has ceased transmission. The service gave on-line up-to-date textual information (albeit in condensed form) to TV viewers in the pre-Internet era and afterwards. Its final broadcast signed off with, 'Goodbye, cruel world.' '... the real impetus for viewers came when BBC Television decided to use a selection of Ceefax pages, accompanied by music, before the start of programming each day. Initially called Ceefax AM and Ceefax In Vision, the Pages From Ceefax "programme" continued for 30 years, being broadcast overnight on BBC Two until this week. As viewers got a small taste of what Ceefax had to offer, millions of Britons during the 1980s invested in new teletext-enabled TV sets which gave them access to the full Ceefax service, which by now included recipe details for dishes prepared on BBC cookery shows, share prices, music reviews and an annual advent calendar.' An British ex-PM (John Major) said, 'From breaking global news to domestic sports news, Ceefax was speedy, accurate and indispensable. It can be proud of its record.'"
An example to many broadcasters around the world, very advanced in its views. Still one of my favourites.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I remember our first Ceefax set. It seemed magical having all that information at hand, waiting with anticipation as the page numbers rolled round to the one you selected. And there were the Ceefax subtitles - some of which added extra humour. I was tipped off on the subtitles on "Rab C Nesbit", which would translate Rab's colloquial Glaswegian into really pretentious English, including the odd "old chap", but would then translate a rather snobbish Englishman into Glaswegian. (Some English viewers actually needed the subtitles to understand the Glaswegian accent, so this was a joke on them).
It's still alive and kicking here in the Netherlands, known as Teletekst. Every journalist wants to be on page 101.
There's even a web-interface and an iPhone app for it, which is a no-nonsense, clutter-free, low-bandwidth source of news, weather, stocks and sport results. I can't live without it :)
http://teletekst.nos.nl/
I must say that I rarely use it on my tv anymore. Which is kind of funny, because nowadays it's still trapped inside the low-tech interface of the 70s although it's mostly used on devices so advanced that even the big visionaries of that age couldn't even dream about it.
Is it nostalgia? Or more like the Stockholm Syndrome? Or does it just hit a sweet spot of usability and simplicity?
One of the best parts of the BBC CeeFax was the subtitles. It was provided as service for the deaf (so you would get extra notes like "doorbell ringing"), it was also great for people who could not understand English so fluently as it was usually a literal transcription of what was being said. Fantastic help for learning to understand spoken English.
I personally think it is not that the technology of Ceefax has finished, it is more the content. Digital Terrestrial TV services in the UK also offer various text-based services in a much more modern interface, however, there is just not the same quantity of content that Ceefax carried. Ceefax was a bit like a condensed newspaper, whereas the current "Red button" services are more like just the front page of a newspaper. But then again, if you are receiving BBC digital transmissions you also have access to far more channels than when Ceefax was launched, including a 24-hour news channel, so maybe it is not necessary. But for me what is more telling is the BBC have not thought it necessary to completely migrate the Ceefax levels of content onto the digital "red button" services. There was nothing on there that nowadays could not be found on the internet, after all.
An example to many broadcasters around the world, very advanced in its views. Still one of my favourites.
Unfortunately, it's no more.
After Rutgers U turned off Usenet, BBC turned off Ceefax.
Looks like good stuffs just ain't made to last as long as their rotten counterparts.
Wonder what's next ... ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A system of realtime transmission of embedded digital data with live updates and multicolour graphics on a TV before most home computers with the computer actually built into the TV (not a set top box!) was pretty much bleeding edge for the time. Its was truly a quantum leap in home technology when up until that point when most people in the UK still didn't even have colour TV sets.
The BBC has moved to digital "teletext"
Obligatory rant. As I commented on the BBC site, despite being piggybacked onto the analogue TV signal, old-style Teletext itself is- and always was- a digital service.
This matters not simply because it was digital, but more importantly because it was probably the first digital service- or digital anything!- aimed at the consumer market, at least in the UK.
And despite all the nostalgic ramblings, it has hardly been given any credit for what is probably its most significant aspect. Years before CDs came out, even before even the Apple II and friends launched the personal computer (and when the closest thing to a home computer was the Altair 8800), Teletext was digital and providing information on demand.
I don't feel the need to defend its shortcomings by modern standards- of course it's dated and basic, it's over 35 bloody years old and came out when even the 1 KB of memory needed to store a page would have been expensive. However, it was a fantastic achievement at the time and still heralded the digital age, however primitive it looks today. And it hacks me off that almost no-one is giving it credit in that area.