Welcome, teletext fanatics! I'll just leave this here...

Saturday 9 June 2007

Teletext lives on

Comparison of Internet based teletext viewers

Thanks to some hard core fans, elements of Teletext and Viewdata survive on the Internet today.

http://www.heaven.affection.net/
http://www.ccl4.org/viewdata/

This service brings together the Internet-only feature of bulletin boards and merges it with Teletext elements:

The Great Internet Viewdata Revival is an attempt to bring the days of Viewdata back; not for commercial purposes, just for fun. All the features are still there, multi user chat, user to user messaging, discussion groups - and fast colourful graphics. Try it! Heaven is just the first... we hope many other old bulletin boards will come back and start a new life on the net.
http://www.heaven.affection.net/what.html


This site, meanwhile, broadcasts live teletext much like the one at Ceefax.com. However, this one seems to convert the data in a slightly different way. Instead of sticking rigidly to the 80x80 pixel grid format, this method is looser and more computer-orientated in that it concentrates on ease of viewing on an Internet browser rather than TV/Minitel system.

http://www.mtv3tekstikanava.fi/

The above links to an Internet version of MTV3, a Finnish teletext service. Staying (relatively) faithful to the original format, this method retains the regular coloured text on black background within the Internet browser. To add to the overall aesthetic there is also a skin of a Television, in which the data service can be viewed, and a remote control that takes the form of a text-based (rather than number based) links menu more akin to the modern Internet site. There are still clickable links on the 'screen' itself but I have yet to find the'reveal' function.

Links here taken from http://www.iol.ie/~rclapham/teletext.html. Unfortunately most of the links are now dead. Indeed, the last update was 1997.

1 comments:

ikram said...

HI there,

here is singapore's Teletext online at the Channelnewsasia website.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna/teletext/tv/teletext.php?pageno=100&movetype=&channel=5&page_other_8=100&page_other_cna=100