SteveC wrote on 2021-08-04, 12:39:
Teletext/Ceefax was a huge thing in the UK - a nice way to get the news, sports, find a holiday, play games even (Bamboozle)! It lasted until 2012 before being shut down!
On Twitter this guy https://twitter.com/grim_fandango often restores Teletext pages from recorded TV 😀
Oh, I didn't know it lasted so long. I'm sorry for spreading misinformation then.
Some source on the web said 90s, so I copied that.
By the way, juding by watching YT tech channles like Techmoan, there's apparently a lot of interesting stuff that has a British background.
I honestly wish to express my great respect for your fellow countrymen and the people involved in those inventions. 👍
BBC and companies like Acorn did a good job at inventing visionary stuff, I think. Like the ARM architecture, to name a lasting example..
Or the early Archimedes computer, which was on par with the Amiga in terms of features. Heck, its succesor even had i486 CPU cards later on. 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK5AZrg3ZD8
There also were good and notable British software houses, like Ocean, Acclaim, Level 9 Computing, Virgin Interactive,
Psygnosis, Magnetic Scrolls, Rare (Rareware), Rainbird Software, Firebird Software, U.S. Gold .. just to name a few.
Also, it seems many protoype stage things that the BBC and other companies invented were later recycled in some way or another.
That Prestel standard, for example. It was a relative of Ceefax and became the base (loosley defined) for these CEPT glyphs used by Videotex (no t) systems.
("This layout was later formalised in the 1981 CEPT videotex standard as the CEPT3 profile", Wikipedia)
Speaking of Videotext (with t).. The system was very interesting. It stored information in the invisble lines at the end (or top ?) of the TV picture.
People with good VCRs even preserved some of these pages on video cassettes (unintentionally). 😉
So with a bit of tinkering and spending some effort, it is possible to still read these pages from the 80s/90s.
Quality systems like Video 2000 or Betamax had a higher chance of storing pages properly so that they can be retrieved still.
VHS is/was too low quality, sadly. SH-VHS, more likely. Well, that's how it is in most cases.
If a very good VCRs and excellent VHS tapes were used, there's a chance forr recovery even via VHS.
Anyway, maybe post processing can help restoring the Videotext data (aka Teletext, Ceefax, , too..
Succesful recoveries from VHS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPhPIvljed4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PamSyYQOTI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBfZEJs5rlc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdbnQP-gFIo
And Betamax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdON1h7YZgg
Ceefax Trailer (BBC):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bbYlmWnxmc
Other systems:
Antiope (early French rival of our World System Teletext/WST):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiope_(teletext)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiitM_zeVKk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpJWUflUoAc
Telidon (Candadian Teletext):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjMUe7hkwRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nJGQmHCh_E
Edit: My bad. Telidon was an on-line service, a bit like Minitel.
Edit2: Drat! It was both, actually. 😅 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telidon
Oracle (British Ceefax rival):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2XYscbAXdo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3vo99VXLmg
USA/Japan: I looked, but haven't found meaningful footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHhjxYkuUlI
There are even projects out there that aim to bring Videotext and Videotex back..
Here's a project that uses a Raspberry Pi's CVBS (Composite) output to generate Ceefax pages and other Teletext pages.
Just connect your Ceefax-capable TV via Composite (PAL, NTSC) and browse the pages like in the good old days. Yay! 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQLhmKh1qI4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G39IF8Ul9oU
This one is a recreation of the Bildschirmtext central computer.
It allows an old BTX terminal or C64+BTX module to dial-in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5IV-WPKzVI
Here's the same for Minitel.
https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/even … viving_minitel/
Also interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_teletext_services
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_System_Teletext
PS: There was "Channel Videodat, a curiosity from Germany.It transmitted lots of shareware/freeware etc. for PCs via TV channel.
A modem (demodulator, actually) would then retrieve the data from video. Also, a GUI was available in which the user could select the stuff he she/wanted to receive.
Cons: The user had to wait until the program was sent.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//