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Ceefax- Bbc2 ?
The Wardster II
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I thought CEEFAX had been killed, in replacement of the red button service.
BBC 2 is transmitting the "in vision" ? service of CEEFAX with the classic, erm, "muzak".
Any ideas?
BBC 2 is transmitting the "in vision" ? service of CEEFAX with the classic, erm, "muzak".
Any ideas?
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As I understand it the in vision service will continue until ALL the analogue transmitters have been switched off.Obviously the desks feeding the ever decreasing analogue viewer base
What happens after that is anyone's guess.
Several of my friends who haven't yet switched say that the analogue service is much reduced feature and news wise which is sad but I suppose a natural progression.
There have been several threads on here as to what happens next..if you have a scout around Ive no doubt you will find them.
If by any chance you are a fan of the "Muzak" and by that I mean the proper stuff that went with the testcard there are numerous CDS of it available
Two of the best on the Chandos label with sleeve notes written by one of our forum members and several others from a company by the name of Apollo Sound.
It was over as far as the viewers in each region were concerned when they had DSO, nothing to do with being "London-centric". Viewers here in Scotland would have thought CEEFAX had ended a couple of years ago so is it Scotland-centric?
The fact that CEEFAX in Vision continues is irrelevant because it is just a slideshow display that can be done in many ways, it is not teletext or CEEFAX when the viewer does not have the ability to select pages.
There is no reason why a slideshow of the pages on the horrible Digital Text could not do the same job out of hours.
after all Red bee operte that as well for the BBC.
BTW there is nothing to stop Digital text doing something simalar - but there are not too many MHEG5 invsion boxes with SDI output ! unlike the MRG kit used for ceefax ..
I'll go away now!
What do the European PSBs use ? They used to have their teletext services 'in vision' over night just as we still do with Ceefax, in recent years there have still been rolling pages of info, the data from which seems to be derived from their web pages. Similar style to ITV Nightscreen
Though SVT2 still gloriously shows a 16:9 version of PM5544 at times.
ITV night screen looks like a powerpoint presentation
My dad was telling me before we were forced over that the analogue Ceefax was not getting updated regularly.
Mind you when it first started in 1998 it was done by a teletext generator from Intelfax (the company behind 4-Tel)
Why not just use pages of digital news with a bit of muzak, etc?
Or maybe the test card? Poor Carole Herseecould finally be gone after so long.
Many years I played with some Videotext systems, I can remember that there was an option to make up a slideshow which operated very like CEEFAX in Vision.
I would not thought it would be difficult to make a similar system with Digital Text, if it is not already in the software.
As you write I can't see them keeping CEEFAX itself running just for occasional fillers out of hours.
I would still love to see some figures on usage of CEEFAX and Digital Text, I have probably not used Digital Text for a month or so and then only briefly whereas I used CEEFAX every day and Page 150 was normally on "Cancel".
Likewise, I cannot see them spending any time, effort or money on replicating it from Digital text, and certainly not for the few hours a week where it would be used as filler. The BBC should be concentrating its funds on more important things, not something that only a few people will probably care about.
My region lost Ceefax September last year. I've moved on. I reckon that most of the DSO'd UK has done the same.
Time to let it, and its late-night filler derivative, go to its grave peacefully and without fuss.
Yes they are, but that's not answering the question I asked.
They don't render the pages into the traditional '1974 spec Teletext' format.
Are you referring to CEEFAX or Digital Text or both?
It would be nice if Ceefax could just be kept going, on Digital. Some countries even have their teletext service online, why can't the BBC do that?
Ceefax
(I hope that you see the comical side of this next bit,, I don't intend it to be anything other than humorous).
And why have it online when there is a much better alternative already online? An alternative with proper readable fonts, formatting, fancy graphics, and even (gasp!) photographs?
It also carries much more information. You might have heard of it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/a-z/
Pretty feature-rich don't you think?
I think you have answered your own question there.
in the UK with Ceefax/ Oracle since 1974, it was not surprising that the regulator ITC and eth BBC etc pointed out that digital Tv probably needed something more than A text service - and thus MHEG5 as the only open standard was proposed/ mandated....
but then the BBC has a fledgling but still very successful website - and it was v good for news etc ..
Also in the UK Teletext as successor to Oracle - had most of the Holiday bookings made as a result of its pages etc and was very very successful.
BUT the web is far better than any text service could be - and thus eyeballs have gone to the web - leaving only some things on the text service.
Also some feeds e.eg airports arrivals refused to supply as they wanted eyeballs on their websites....
In the early days of web many non UK Broadcasters had to start an electronic news service -only to discover that they had one - their teletext service - and so they put them on the web .. rather than wrote longer pieces specially...
Teletext changes the way in which some many things were done - from technical collaboration (precursor of DVB) through to making the UK the most "digital" country in the world (in the mid 1980s) through having red button and more than normal; linear channels on your Tv .... and into game on the TV for your children ...
A great British success - superseded by another great British Invention the world wide web.
The kit will be old but I would thought a digital version could share the same system as that producing digital text and give two outputs in the datastream going out to the transmitters.
The BBC online service provides a different service, the whole point of teletext that you could view on the same screen as the television programmes. Not everyone has a computer running near their TV and teletext was integrated into one system controlled by the same remote control as the TV. Digital Text promised wonderful things but whenever I have looked at it in the past I cannot seen any improvement on teletext just a slower system that is not as convenient to use. A month or so ago there were some programme changes so I thought I would look on Digital Text to try and find out what was happening (the EPG was not up to data and has a poor layout), I was surprised to find that the TV schedules did not seem to be on Digital Text.