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.'"

Comments

good side of the BBC

[Jerry Smith]

An example to many broadcasters around the world, very advanced in its views. Still one of my favourites.

People forget how advanced teletxt was for the 70s

[Viol8]

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.

It was the *first* digital consumer service

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It was the *first* digital consumer service

[RoboJ1M]

Yeah I hate it when they do that. Not only was it digital, it was interactive as well.

Fast-text (the coloured buttons) even gave you hyper links.

Hell, you could download software to your home computer over it!

There were digital publications (Digitizer!! 8D)

There were interactive games (Bamboozle!)

There was even at one point a chat room (You had to phone up and type in your message using, I think, SMS style text input)

Finally, I remember voice controlled teletext. You phoned up, set it up, browsed to one of the sub pages, spoke into the phone and the right page turned up on the screen.

All that by the early 90s.