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Ceefax Simulator

nathanmediaservices.co.uk

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Re: Ceefax Simulator

#81

Post by derefr »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #74
dahauns wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the Austrian: https://teletext.orf.at/ And it might be tempting to brush this off as just an anachronism to amuse ourselves with, but IMO this undervalues it quite a bit. For example, the Austrian teletext still has almost a million daily users (in a country of 9 million) - let that sink in. And there's a good reason: Conceptually, Teletext (at least when it's well maintained) is the antithesis to modern infor…

I wouldn't be so quick to crown teletext as the king of succinct media. Just on the first page of the ORF teletext channel you refer to, there are lines flashing between advertisements for online gambling, tattoos and vegan (?) products with which to protect one's bladder and prostate. In order to navigate between news stories you have to memorize series of three-digit numbers or scroll through long indexes. After th…

Mind you, neither the numeric indices for navigation, nor the lack of pictures, is really a stumbling block for the two user-types who most heavily contributed to / constrained the design — that being 1. blind people using screen readers who wanted to access a BBS-like service providing news, weather, etc., that would consider their access needs; and 2. deaf people who were accessing a given company’s teletext system under the expectation of it serving as the visual equivalent of said company’s IVR phone tree.

(In fact, consider how well teletext UX works as an efficient, navigable information-dense directory system for both blind and deaf and motor-impaired users, all inherently such that you just design once for the constraints of the system, and you get “the right thing.” There’s a reason governments latched onto it: it really works for everybody!)

The Web in theory is a successor to teletext in serving these needs… but it was really only the Gopher / HTML1 Web that was an inherent improvement. As soon as we started nudging content around with semantically-meaningless tables and divs to look better, the Web started to not work so good for users with these interaction difficulties.

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#82

Post by switch007 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #62
jjbinx007 wrote: post #2

This is great. Teletext was a big deal in the UK, a lot of people used to book cheap holidays from deals they saw on it. It was where you could check the news, the weather and maybe play a multiple choice quiz or two. Happy memories.

We once got flights to Florida from Glasgow for £49 fly drive off of Teletext. Booked it Tuesday and flew out on Thursday. Those where the days!

I thought all those were bait and switch. That's cool!

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#84

Post by seabass-labrax »

derefr wrote: post #81
seabass-labrax wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so quick to crown teletext as the king of succinct media. Just on the first page of the ORF teletext channel you refer to, there are lines flashing between advertisements for online gambling, tattoos and vegan (?) products with which to protect one's bladder and prostate. In order to navigate between news stories you have to memorize series of three-digit numbers or scroll through long indexes. After th…

Mind you, neither the numeric indices for navigation, nor the lack of pictures, is really a stumbling block for the two user-types who most heavily contributed to / constrained the design — that being 1. blind people using screen readers who wanted to access a BBS-like service providing news, weather, etc., that would consider their access needs; and 2. deaf people who were accessing a given company’s teletext system…

That's true, but teletext isn't theoretically more constrained than the Web is. There's nothing stopping, for instance, teletext operators from producing pixelated animations or scrolling text effects, just as there's nothing stopping Web developers from adding accessibility-hostile layouts.

In Britain, teletext hasn't been available for over ten years now, but at the same time, a department called the Government Digital Services do an excellent job of making public websites accessible - complete with ARIA labels, semantic elements, all of that sort of thing. I'd easily acknowledge that teletext was ahead of its time, but I don't lament its replacement with the Web.

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#85

Post by phantomathkg »

Retr0id wrote: post #76
ta1243 wrote: post #48

For those living in London, one of the Mayoral Candidates is promising to bring back ceefax. Not sure how he'll do it, technically I believe DTT can carry teletext data, although I'm not sure if modern TVs will process it. Back in the day I believe ceefax used to be generated out of a couple of beige tower PCs in a BBC office somewhere.

Modern TVs support "HbbTV", and it's enabled by default in many locales. It's essentially HTML-over-DVB (including javascript), which is absolutely terrifying when you realize that there's no encryption or authentication, and that it's something you can broadcast for yourself with a cheap SDR, and that TVs run outdated browser engines with root-equivalent privileges.

Hbbtv only embed the URL into the stream. The rest of the JS part came from internet still.

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#86

Post by Retr0id »

phantomathkg wrote: post #85
Retr0id wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern TVs support "HbbTV", and it's enabled by default in many locales. It's essentially HTML-over-DVB (including javascript), which is absolutely terrifying when you realize that there's no encryption or authentication, and that it's something you can broadcast for yourself with a cheap SDR, and that TVs run outdated browser engines with root-equivalent privileges.

Hbbtv only embed the URL into the stream. The rest of the JS part came from internet still.

Maybe it first worked like that, but it's certainly no longer the case in newer versions. I've personally compromised a not-network-connected TV using only broadcast signals.

HTML+JS can be pushed via the "DSM-CC object carousel"

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#87

Post by alexdbird »

ta1243 wrote: post #45
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the best way of checking the score in a football match, in real time. When there were enough games playing to necessitate pagination, the wait for your team's page to come around added extra tension! Also, Bamboozle.

Bamboozle was great, it had "hidden" pages with numbers like "4F5" -- normal ceefax numbers were 0-9 because that's what you could enter on your remote control, the hex numbers were only reachable from the "fasttext" red/green/yellow/blue buttons, so it was hard to "cheat", the wrong answer sent you back to the beginning, you couldn't just put the number back

You could still cheat. It’s not fresh in my memory but the correct page number was distinctive and the incorrect pages did not load instantly, so you could just press all the colours until you saw the right one!

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#88

Post by jonplackett »

dilawar wrote: post #56
jonplackett wrote: post #44

I have a 6yo daughter and it’s always funny trying to explain old technology to her. Yesterday I was trying to just explain TV shows starting at specific times the of the day and even that seemed insane to her. Equally having to go to a shop to get a song was mind blowing. I haven’t had to explain ceefax yet so this will help.

My coworker 4y old son have never seen money exchanged at shops since UPI has become so prevalent in India. He would just pick things at shop and walk. He didn't relate scanning QR codes with exchange. I should ask my coworker if he tried explaining physical money to him and how he reacted to the idea.

The money thing is really interesting in that my kids don’t have any concept of how much any amount of money is. And if I say I don’t have money for something they just don’t get it because all I ever do is beep my watch on the reader.

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#89

Post by jonplackett »

beerandt wrote: post #58
jonplackett wrote: post #44

I have a 6yo daughter and it’s always funny trying to explain old technology to her. Yesterday I was trying to just explain TV shows starting at specific times the of the day and even that seemed insane to her. Equally having to go to a shop to get a song was mind blowing. I haven’t had to explain ceefax yet so this will help.

7yod bought an underwater camera from a shop while at the beach. Basically a 35mm disposable inside a sealed clear case. Told her it needed film to work which she accepted pretty easily (the store didn't have any). A couple days later we find film, I load it. She asks how to turn on the screen to take pics... The idea of a view finder completely lost her. Of course then I had to explain to her how something could eve…

Yeah cameras are a fun one to talk through because at least there’s some fun bits to learn about - tbe idea of film and no batteries somehow now seems MORE like magic than a modern camera with a screen, which is pretty weird.

Maybe there’s a new saying “Any technology sufficiently ancient is indistinguishable from magic”

Re: Ceefax Simulator

#90

Post by beerandt »

jonplackett wrote: post #89
beerandt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7yod bought an underwater camera from a shop while at the beach. Basically a 35mm disposable inside a sealed clear case. Told her it needed film to work which she accepted pretty easily (the store didn't have any). A couple days later we find film, I load it. She asks how to turn on the screen to take pics... The idea of a view finder completely lost her. Of course then I had to explain to her how something could eve…

Yeah cameras are a fun one to talk through because at least there’s some fun bits to learn about - tbe idea of film and no batteries somehow now seems MORE like magic than a modern camera with a screen, which is pretty weird. Maybe there’s a new saying “Any technology sufficiently ancient is indistinguishable from magic”

I got to see a child-lightbulb look from my wife when I said it's all potential chemical energy stored in a consumable cartridge. One's just much more specialized than the other.
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