For more, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17430660 and what that hyperlinks to in its turn.
We See Facts: The BBC’s Ceefax Teletext Service
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: We See Facts: The BBC’s Ceefax Teletext Service
#22Teletext have more than a million users in Denmark. Truly surprising to me but it is also kinda awesome. It certainly still serves a purpose. No ads, no noise just pure signal.
On the site [1] of the NOS (dutch broadcast foundation) there is even a big button in the header. Clicking trough the news items on the site is very slow compared to clicking trough news items on the Teletekst app.
[1] https://nos.nl
Re: We See Facts: The BBC’s Ceefax Teletext Service
#23For a while in the 80s the BBC Ceefax service offered the ability to download software [1]. You needed special hardware to decode the broadcast signal, and software to convert from text-encoded binary. It seemed pretty amazing at the time. At about the same time, the BBC also broadcast audio-encoded software on its Radio 4 station after normal programming had finished for the night. I remember staying up late to reco…
> the BBC also broadcast audio-encoded software on its Radio 4 station
The genius of modems is that they turned the mass of existing infrastructure for voice into infrastructure for data. We're familiar with the assimilation of phone lines and cassette tapes, and whilst this instance is less familiar, it's just more of the same.
Re: We See Facts: The BBC’s Ceefax Teletext Service
#24For a while in the 80s the BBC Ceefax service offered the ability to download software [1]. You needed special hardware to decode the broadcast signal, and software to convert from text-encoded binary. It seemed pretty amazing at the time. At about the same time, the BBC also broadcast audio-encoded software on its Radio 4 station after normal programming had finished for the night. I remember staying up late to reco…
Also there was'4 Computer Buffs' where code was transmitted by a flashing square on screen during a program: https://www.tvcream.co.uk/?p=2347
Here's a video of how you had to make the 'receiver' for this: https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=89458723914479030 and here's an interview where there's the software being transmitted at the same time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULGDTtGZcN0
Re: We See Facts: The BBC’s Ceefax Teletext Service
#25Teletext have more than a million users in Denmark. Truly surprising to me but it is also kinda awesome. It certainly still serves a purpose. No ads, no noise just pure signal.
German Teletext is filled with ads. FIND WOMEN IN YOUR AREA is what I consider ads.
The TV stations not broadcasting from Denmark, and not funded (at least partially) by public money had similar ads. Either for adult services, or betting.
What most view as "the real teletext" is the service provided by DR (Danmarks Radio), the Danish equivalent of the BBC. They are not allowed to show ads anywhere.
Re: We See Facts: The BBC’s Ceefax Teletext Service
#26Ceefax has a long legacy: even today BBC News online stories are written so that the core of the story is told in the first four paragraphs, because that is what was sent to Ceefax. (It's not just nostalgia, though the concision is good practice. It's because that format is still used by the BBC's "Red Button" TV information services.)
That's a based on standard newspaper practice; it's a lot older than Ceefax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
Yes, that's right but this a technical variant of that: it's literally the first 16 lines of the story, where "lines" are defined by the Ceefax standard
Re: We See Facts: The BBC’s Ceefax Teletext Service
#27Also viewable on Acorn's BBC range of computers (e.g. Micro, Master) by means of an external interface: https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acorn-Teletext-... Ceefax was actually published from these machines as well!
I had software to edit teletext pages on my BBC Micro, fun to play with but I never got my hands on the interface sadly.