A long rambly update

if you still need some insight into teletext culture: https://boingboing.net/2015/02/12/german-teletext-porn-sorta-sf.html

tobias girst

So, did you not light the shelves and start the video color behind you because you're being "chatty" with your Patreons? I think the term you were looking for about what you took at Epcot is B-roll. This is all good stuff. Keep it up.

Mike Bird

Here in Ireland, we had plain Teletext, FastText and Interactive. Teletext provided pages based on numeric entry, e.g. 100 for Index, 101 for News, 200 for Sport, etc. 888 was generally always subtitles (closed captions). When a page # was keyed in, the TV would show the current page # being transmitted and once it reached the requested page, it would appear. Some page #s that had multiple subpages (e.g. long news article across 2-3 screens of text), which cycled through each time the page # was transmitted. The remote had a hold button to keep the current text shown. FastText capable TVs had 4 colour buttons on the remote. Each teletext page could assign shortcuts to the 4 colours, e.g. on the news index, red could be for first headline, green for sports, yellow for lotto and blue for weather. These TVs generally had a buffer that would store the pages so the requested page would appear immediately upon pressing the colour. However, pages with multiple subpages still required waiting until to cycle through to the desired subpage. The Interactive teletext service (Aertel Interactive here) required dialling a freephone # to access. Once call went through, a voice spoke a special page # to enter (e.g. 191) which provided an index page for the service. However, instead of pressing buttons on the remote, the user would press digits on the phone. The service would refresh the page # immediately upon dialling each digit, effectively like a terminal. It was mainly used for website-like services such as train time tables that would require too many pages to cycle through.

Seán Byrne

Teletext was called Text TV here in Denmark and was a really big thing in the 90s and beginning of the 2000s. And theres still some channels that are transmitting it, even though tv signals are digital now, but a lot of old people still use it for news and hard of hearing testing on programmes. I used the text tv service to read about movies in my youth, since internet wasn’t a thing back then. And I remember my cousin he used it all the time to see sports results. To me it’s still a fascinating service, making information possible by using the analogue format in the tv picture,. Looking forward to see your videos on that.

Because Why-Nerd

Looking forward to all that's coming. And when I saw the MagicBand on the table I instantly got excited!!

Patrick Bianchi

Fun fact, the manager of the Turkish soccer team Galatasaray recently tweeted the ranking page of the Dutch teletext as a way to show their team was ranked first: https://twitter.com/fatihterim/status/1130196353374728193 It's apparently a tradition in Turkey to tweet teletext pages, but the Turkish broadcaster had recently decided to stop providing teletext service, so the Turkish soccer fans had to switch to the Dutch teletext service as a way to keep up their superstition.

Compuart

So came across something while researching this a bit. Apparently there's some repos on github for the Raspberry Pi to generate CC/Teletext/VBI data on the composite video output and one such project has archived teletext pages that it can feed to a compatible tv: https://github.com/peterkvt80/vbit2 Sadly even with my US Sceptre TV which can work with PAL signals I guess it does not work with proper Euro/UK Teletext data. I can confirm the CC side works though through the Pi. So maybe the above software might be of use if you can come across a TV set here stateside that can work with Teletext?

Have already sent this to you on Twitter but never saw any reaction, so unsure if you got it. Anyway, see these BBC research papers on CEEFAX. https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/search?query=ceefax&submit=

Colin Grimshaw

I remember on a quality VHS recording, some teletext pages would come through (with lots of errors). I wonder if someone in a country still broadcasting teletext on digital terrestrial (e.g. Sweden still does this) could record digitally and send it to you so you can actually use it for yourself?

kalleboo

Absolutely thrilled about the upcoming teletext videos! I don't think the success is related to the amount of television programming or the lack thereof. Teletext would be more comparable to what the internet is today, as it would provide instant news, sports, tv guide, weather, air plane departure times, etc. All of those were available while watching your favorite TV program. In a way, it was like having an iPad on your lap while watching your TV show. As to why it was more successful in Europe? Possibly because it was relatively expensive to provide the teletext service, and hard to make money out of advertizements. Ceefax, which was BBC's teletext service, helped solve the chicken and egg issue, by making content for the new technology platform, allowing the platform to become a success. After Ceefax being introduced, all other European countries would setup their own teletext service, comparible to that of Ceefax. Maybe it also helped that each European country would have their own public broad casting channel, which would be the undisputed number one channel, making the local market of TV channels less fragmented than in the States. Thirdly, Europe was pretty incentivized to come up with and agree upon good standards, both because the European marked was fragmented (as in: many countries) and because the Japanese industries were seen as a threat. Another interesting thing surrounding teletext might be the side-technologies that were using it, like the PDC technology. PDC would work in conjunction with the VCR, allowing the user to select programs to be recorded from teletext, and that would send a signal to the VCR when it should actually be recording the program. This would solve the case of when a program would start at a later than scheduled time.

Compuart

dutch public broadcast also has a web interface for their teletekst service: https://nos.nl/teletekst

Nico Assinck

most of the german TV stations offer a teletext - web gateway, so you can use the teletext via your browser. http://www.ard-text.de/ or http://module.zdf.de/teletext/deep/master.php?zaehler=100 for example

Dirk Jot

So many fond memories of Teletext –especially of their daily videogame section Digitiser, which was gloriously and outrageously subversive in its humour. Interestingly, I had a Mac as a kid which could receive TV signals and Teletext pages, and I’m pretty sure it had some way of allowing you to pick and choose from the auto-changing subpages, which was incredibly useful.

Zveebo

https://youtu.be/PUFO7SeZlAg

Colin Grimshaw

I loved this video, Alec! I now play a game called "Disney Heroes" when someone canceled "Dragon Soul" this month. There are so many characters I've never heard of, so the idea of "Disney" anything is kind-of new to me. I need to watch some Disney videos. I visited Disney World when I was 6 (1976). All I remember was: Epcot was new and big, the submarine ride was awesome, and I got the worst sunburn in my life. Alec, if something gets in the way in your personal life, at least *I* am behind you. Release whenever you want. Take care, and much love from Taiwan.

Speaking of show, at Disneyland Hong Kong they use another clever trick for "magic": they've linked it up with MTR (the Hong Kong Metro system) to entice people to take the metro there rather than drive. Sunny Bay station (the one with the branch line off to Disneyland) is decorated in a futuristic style while the Disneyland station has a Victorian style to evoke traveling to the past. An interesting way of emulating the monorail experience there, and at the same time integrating it with the Hong Kong Metro!

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

Why specifically a German person?

Marcel de Jong

I'd recommend passing a script of the Teletext video past both a Brit and a German before you record it, so you know it's right. I'm happy to be the Brit.

Big Car

At least, I hope that link works outside of the Netherlands

Marcel de Jong

Teletekst is still very much a thing for Dutch TV owners and if you need screenshots you could look at this Teletekst app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eoffice.android

Marcel de Jong

Here in Australia, we had Teletext as well, and before digital tv we had a total of 5 channels, 3 of which were commercial. We now have many more with digital, though they all are related to one of those 5 original channels.

Scott Rowland

Ceefax was the BBC's teletext service. The BBC created it but still. ITV and Channel 4 had Oracle, well until Oracle lost it's franchise in the early 90s. The replacement was called just "teletext". I'm from Wales so we had S4C rather than Channel 4, which was a Welsh language station (S4C mean Sianel Pedwar Cymru - Literally Channel 4 Wales), where the teletext service was called "Spectel". Once analogue satellite came along the Satellite also had textext services. Which mostly showed programme times

Mark Stradling

We had Teletext in New Zealand too. You could view the TV Guide and weather; and from a quick Google search, even maybe sports results, lotto results, flight information, etc. An interesting aspect of it was that not everyone used it. If you had Sky TV (satellite) then you had the digital EPG and weather channel and all that. So for many of those that had Sky, Teletext was this weird and obscure thing that you had no idea how to operate.

So, about the monorail, when I was a cast member, I read a document saying something to the effect of be wary of people who are asking lots of questions about the monorails. This was back in 2005, so there was probably some fears about terrorism regarding the monorail lines lingering from the events of 2001. I hope they didn't think you were scouting because you wanted to commit acts of terrorism.

William Gray

Perfect timing! I needed something to listen to while mowing the lawn and up pops the notification of your video in my inbox. On the subject of teletext (Videotext over here, as Robert mentioned), my father still uses it today for reading news, getting weather forecasts and current temperatures, stock market prices, and up-to-date arrival times at the local airport (he often picks us up when we return from vacations). I know that many of my older/elderly relatives still use Videotext for things that I would look up on the internet. So I guess it still serves an important role even today. I only had access to teletext when visiting my grandparents, but as a child I found it really fascinating, especially the "quiz function": There was a way to tell the decoder not to show part of the page, and you had to press a dedicated button on the remote control to reveal it.

Dr. Bjoern Bieber

I remember riding during beta of Countdown to Extinction (now Dinosaur) - after getting off my sister and I were smiling and remarked how it felt like we were going to be thrown out of the car and how great it was. We felt lucky to ride it before they slowed it down for "real people"; we knew it couldn't stay like that :-)

Georgia -- my neck of the woods! :-) Hope you got to see some of the sights. Decatur is not too terribly far from Stone Mountain -- maybe you got to see that. Biggest piece of granite in the country. ;-)

Laurence MacNeill

In Sweden it is called Texttv and we still get it via digital form on as fiber TV/HDD recorder box.

Sina Farhat

Heck, I remember a couple of our local channels in a not-too-huge DMA into the early '00s would still stop transmitting in the wee hours of the morning after the late night shows were done. Did the whole classic national anthem sign-off and then the signal was cut until the next morning.

I do recall a TV we had in the late 90s here in the US had a teletext related option. If memory serves (and that's being generous at this point!) it was combined in with the CC options. So when hitting the CC button on the remote you had the option of CC1, CC2, and Teletext. It was a floor model Zenith and based on my quick Google-Fu the model was SMS2504EW. Much like you, seeing that option made me very curious what it did and was for but being completely unavailable here in the US was a letdown to say the least. All I knew about it at the time is when turning it on the entire bottom half of the screen had a black box placed over it regardless of the channel content.

I assume Teletext and Videotext is the same thing. At least Videotext was the common name for it in Germany. I don't think the popularity of it had something to do with the number of available channels. (In the early 90s we had 8 channels.) Basically it was a simple form of what we all had much later with the Internet. You could read about the current program and upcoming shows for the next few days. Often with much more detail than what was printed in the TV magazine. Actors, Director, Year etc. Also available where the latest news about everything. You could look up the weekly music charts (Top 100) and read reviews about new music albums. And the last few pages were always expansive telephone numbers for "adult content". Videotext was a pretty neat thing if you had a TV with enough memory to store a few pages. Otherwise it was very slow. Many pages had alternating content so you had to wait for the second/alternate page to show up. I remember you could see bits and pieces of the videotext on VHS recordings when you played the video and activated the videotext on the TV. I've heard with SVHS recordings you could read the entire content from the time the program was aired. Maybe that could be a way to show it today? Of course there's the whole PAL/NTSC thing and finding a TV that supports it...

Robert

"why are there the monorails?" good question. This is my first update vid i've seen since i joined the patreon. Long time fan otherwise. looking forward to all the projects you described!!!

Justin Romprey

TV wasn't 24/7 in the U.S. until the 90's as well. Lots of areas had channels that would go off the air at midnight or 1am. I also had a handful of available channels in my area, we had about 4 solid broadcasted channels, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS. Around '92 or '93 was when my area finally got Fox, finally I could watch The Simpsons. Since I lived in a border town we did get two additional Mexican stations, and there was also TBS and that was it. It wasn't until the late 90's that we actually got more channels by then I was "subscribed" to satellite television and it didn't matter.

Kajico

"It can't be that long and rambly". "Holy cow 42 minutes ... I wonder how many slices of toast that is."

Hope the spontaneous trip was a good one! Let us Georgians know when you are here, let us show you good southern hospitality! Hope all is well!

Christopher Bassett