Misc. links

• Video cards were originally much the same resolution as teletext. However whilst Video cards advanced teletext's format remained the same.

• Windows 3.0, released 1990, utilised a graphics card with over 1600 colours.
• An article from 1987 about teletext in the US. Shows how behind the times the American continent was with teletext: televisions with appropriate encoders were not widely available in 1987.
• It's always worth a look at the Lektrolab Flickr stream.
• About the first video game -'Spacewar' at inventors.com
• Windows 95 was a pretty popular Operating System in its time. It helped Internet Explorer dominate the web browser market for ages. WorldWideWeb, meanwhile, was the first web browser and HTML editor.
  
• An important landmark in the history of the BBC and indeed television - the Queen's coronation. 22 million people watched.
  

Teletext remote control icons

Remote controls modified for teletext control have their own selection of icons that correspond to subtitles, index page etc. This could be a useful set of visual metaphors for the website.

The impetus for a more complex type of television remote control came in the late 1970s with the development of the Ceefax teletext service by the BBC. Most commercial remote controls at that time had a limited number of functions, sometimes as few as three: next channel, previous channel, and volume/off. This type of control did not meet the needs of teletext sets where pages were identified with three-digit numbers. A remote control to select teletext pages would need buttons for each number from zero to nine, as well as other control functions, such as switching from text to picture, and the normal television controls of volume, station, brightness, colour intensity and so on. Early teletext sets used wired remote controls to select pages but the continuous use of the remote control required for teletext quickly indicated the need for a wireless device. So BBC engineers began talks with one or two television manufacturers which led to early prototypes in around 1977-78 that could control a much larger number of functions.
-- Wikipedia entry on remote control

Font specifications

• There's a bit of a specifications guide from 1992 here.
• Mode Nine looks like a pretty true teletext font.
• A BBC Micro font.
  

More teletext related stories - December/Jan

• TVNZ Announces Captioning Milestone - in New Zealand, the subtitling of programmes has apparently reached over 200 hours per week. The use of Teletext as an accessibility tool is increasingly popular. This article was written this morning, actually.
  

Teletext To Sell Mobile Ads: TV information service Teletext has appointed mobile advertising agency 4th Screen Advertising to handle its mobile advertising sales. NMA reports that Teletext is also preparing to launch a new mobile site for its travel site Teletext Holidays. The revenue from its mobile ads will supplement its current mobile revenue stream from SMS alerts.
-- Mobile Content Bits, Moconews

• Sysmedia have launched a new service that allows for subtitles to be recorded on video. Up until now you needed to have a specially built VCR to record subs but the Internet revolution had made it easier to provide captioning on programmes.

• Irish media company RTE has received an award for its web-based mobile service which grabs content from its teletext service.

Telegiffer - hi-res

You might remember Telegiffer, a small project from last year. Here's a hi res version of it.

I'm disappointed I can't get the HMTL embedding to work for Stage6 videos. Pity because it's a higher quality than YouTube.

More Teletextery

Newsflash! The Isle of Wight has finally got teletext. According to one resident,

"I can’t believe that the information revolution can go any further than this."

Not that the IOW is behind the times or anything. Thanks to Newsbiscuit for that 'story'.

From the depths of the Internet's formative years comes MrDaveo's distinctly 1990s webpage on Digitiser. More proof that the cult spread far and wide across the land, beamed into the front rooms of tens, nay thousands of television owners. That purple text is beginning to hurt my eyes.

Elsewhere, Mr Tanilsoo has another edition of his Estonian teletext up at Youtube:



From one of these news stories at least, it seems some parts of Estonian society are a little bit 'anti-digital'. Good on them.

And finally, I have to admit I was a 'ziner'. That is, I sent at least one letter to the Mega Zine, a surreal pre-Internetisation forum. Much like Digitiser this had a cult following but was created by its readers rather than an editorial team. It was the definitive teletext magazine service but It's all disappeared now. Everyone has moved to the Internet.

Online teletext archiving - Digitiser

Digitiser is a service that used to run on Channel 4's Teletext service. It was a video game magazine service that 'revelled in controversy' but was massively popular. It was a website before its time: a daily digest of news, opinion and reviews including a user feedback section. There was even an 'Ask Mr. T' bit!

This site is an archive of some of these pages. I read on the mailing list that all pages are kept in an official archive, at least for BBC, but I've yet to find any confirmation of this online. The site, by 'Moleman', is a fan created resource for nostalgics: the serviced finished in 2003 as part of the phasing out of teletext systems.

The service, which had a cult following, is now dead and the creators and users have dispersed, many to the Internet. Mr Biffo, one of the creators, now has his own blog whilst there are loads of tribute websites all over the net.

There are many interesting aspects... For one thing, they're not trying to be 'worthy', or communitarian. They're not being right-on, saying come over to us and be exclusive and culty. Fans who write in and attempt to creep in a supercilious way are liable to get the biggest kicking of the lot. And yet - the fans they do come. These pages probably get more 'readership' than any print magazine, and not just because they're free. And not either because they're trying to 'get in with the kids' in a patronising way. I reckon some of it goes right over the heads of most of their audience; it's not being 'clever', it's simply not being condescending and lowest-common-denominator. They expect their readers to have a little intelligence.

Brave New World

• Digitiser Wikipedia entry
• Moleman's site
  
• See also this previous post.

Teletext specifications - links

Information on the general specifications of teletext pages.

• How to Use TTXEditor, a teletext page creation tool. Includes information on some of teletext's functions.
• Teletext - Old Digits in a New Age, a dissertation written by some former BBC employees. Explains in some detail how the packets are organised.
• The Prestel Protocol, includes some character sets.
• Lektrolab's Mac Cheater's guide. Created as part of the 2006 submission project, a bit of information on how you could create teletext pages in Mac paint programs. Includes demo gifs.
• Broadcast teletext specification, courtesy of the web archive.
  

Commercial teletext art

On special occasions, Ceefax used to have commemorative/decorative pixel art pages.


This very purple page is from Ceefax's Wimbledon coverage. Compare to the digital teletext version and it looks very low tech. Snazzy, though.


Graphs aren't used much on teletext any more but this page from Oracle in the 1980s is a diagram for motorway delays. Inventive if basic manipulation of the format.


An old Fun and Games page. Now defunct, this used to be the most fun part of teletext, containing tacky quizzes and puzzles that could be completed in a commercial break. Nice little image of a lighthouse but I don't know the relevance of it.

Source: Teletext Then and Now

Weather Watch part 2

More from the history of teletext as defined by weather forecast pages.


This map from Oracle in 1977 displays a possible weathermap layout for a regional forecast. To my knowledge nothing like this was ever implemented and the test status of the page is indicated by the text: "regional weather forecast could use maps like this one".


And this is the national weather map from the same page set. Note the colour clash and different map to the Ceefax one.


This is a humorous map from an Oracle page in 1989. This must have been phased out pretty quickly as I don't remember it. The humour seems to have largely gone from commercial teletext - it has become serious.


2000s, an interactive TV map from Teletext including television icons. Note the JPEG advertisements.

Compare this to a 1996 televised broadcast of the weather including a satellite image of Britain. On teletext, Michael Fish's place is taken by some text.

Source: Teletext Then and Now

A modern teletext font

If teletext had, or should it, live on after the switchoff, in order to fit in with the plethora of new technologies available on the Internet and elsewhere it would need to develop. It would be interesting to see how far I could take this whilst remaining faithful to the 80 x 69 pixel canvas. This could mean changes to:

• Colour palette, increase from 8 to 16, 24, or even higher.
• Change in character set. This might include:
• Addition of extended Unicode symbols such as @, (, | etc.
• Addition of new symbols for the teletext format
• Addition of emoticons.
• (Basically a whole new character set.)
  
• Option to redefine the font. Eg. Courier, Fixedsys
  

Some proposed chapter headings

Here are some rough headings for possible chapter sections, along with approximate dates. This assumes the project will be in essay format. Subjects I am more interested in will take the form of case studies rather than just a paragraph or two worked into the main body of text.

Intro - Technical/history

1. Teletext's invention and inception (1970).
1. Background: other digital media around at the time: arcade video games, links in commercial popularity and aesthetic. 1972 - Pong becomes widely popular, 1976 - teletext launched. ARPAnet in America - primitive early version of the Internet. Functionalities.
   
2. Aesthetic. 1974: the 40x24 character grid was agreed upon, including text and a few graphic characters for creating simple graphics. The constituent media of 'teletext' - Teletext and Viewdata.

Sociological

1. Teletext's growth in popularity
1. 1990s - firmly in public conscience.
   
2. Teletext and television.
   
1. Television sketch parodies - Alexei Sayle.
2. Pages from Ceefax.
3. Case study: Tom Moody's 'Dallas' project (1990). Teletext as an extension of television, a text version of the medium. Comments on television and society
4. 1997 - teletext spreads to satellite. Small case study - Data Design commercial teletext design - MTV teletext.
2. Pioneering: the medium's status as first commercially successful digital information retrieval method. Bringing technology to the masses through limited set of aesthetic restrictions.
   
3. Teletext's service - uses. Simple games. Information service. Accessibility tool - subtitling.
1. Case study: functions as compared to (early) Internet - Viewdata's crude email system; reader view pages - use of teletext pages as discussion forums etc. How the two mediums never genuinely converged.
   

Coexistence/crossing of mediums

1. Internet growth in popularity (1990s).
   
1. For the 1990s, coexisted with teletext.
   
2. 2000s: Internet begins to take over.
   
2. Teletext adapted for the web browser.
1. Jodi's 'text' piece.
2. Carola Unterberger-Probst: 'Framed'
3. Encoding to receive analogue teletext via net.
3. Teletext's expansion worldwide (1980s)
   
1. Ceefax grows from 30 pages in 1973 to 600 in mid-80s. Spread to France, America in early 80s.
2. Along with Atari home console, propagating the 'jagged pixellation' aesthetic. Paul Slocum: Atari > windowed GUI.
   

Death of the traditional aesthetic

1. From first analogue aerial switch off in 2007 to the complete switch off in 2012.
2. Differing public opinions - "sad to see it go", "natural progression of technology would see it die out".
3. Introduction of digital TTX and later Interactive TV - an evolved form of the traditional analogue version. 'Sounding death knoll' of the traditional aesthetic.
   
4. Level 1 and 2 teletext upgrades - how these relate to modern 'digital teletext' in terms of aesthetic. The 'stepping stone' between teletext and digital teletext.
   

Future of traditional teletext

1. It would seem the traditional format is doomed but the very medium which could see it die out would be the one allowing it to live on after the analogue switch off, namely the Internet.
   
2. Estonia - still the No.1 method of information retrieval ahead of the Internet. Tarmo Tanilsoo's tribute websites.
3. Case study: Lektrolab - 2006 Microtel project. People still using teletext aesthetic to create art.
   

Some conclusions

1. Despite sharing a number of functions, Teletext is not really the predecessor of the Internet, more a separately evolved medium with some similarities. Whereas the ARPA network developed in America teletext was more a British invention and, even though there were signs they might with Viewdata, at no point did the two converge.
   
1. Maybe a simple diagram showing the two separate 'evolutions' could explain this point.
   
2. The teletext aesthetic survives?
   
1. Later, the Internet allowed for enthusiasts to create homages to the medium. To date, there are over 500 worldwide terrestrial teletext services available on the Internet. This could be the medium that sees the aesthetic live on, even after the analogue version is gone.
2. The mobile web browser as having similar technical/aesthetic restrictions.
   
3. Lektrolab's project shows there are still those who value the aesthetic as a medium for artistic expression. Eboy shows that the pixel as an aesthetic is still in the public's conscience in the fact it still has commercial value (brief mention of Eboy, not worth going into great detail over).
   
4. Services such as Digitiser, even after they were taken from terrestrial screens, adapted to the online format (Digiworld). Fan sites.
   

It might be worth having an appendix with some of these timelines in them to help illustrate. Perhaps these could be written timelines as in Internet Art by Rachel Greene. Should the medium of the outcome facilitate it, include with/alongside the text/content.

Cross reference sections in some way.

Viewdata and telesoftware: links

Silicon Village

This is a virtual village, now largely closed for business. In its heyday, it was a vewdata-themed hub for discussion, an early version of Second Life, if you like. Visitors could visit the leisure centre, with games such as F1, and the newsagent where people could chat and post comments. Formatted in a teletext format, this was an online version of teletext.

Carbuncle Corner was one section of the Silicon Village site that spun off into its own website. Originally transmitted on the viewdata service, site now serves as a place for Ben Hervey's comment as well as nostalgia from the old SV website and some other stuff, such as his guide to Cornwall, only updated when 'he had something to write about' much like a blog.

Telesoftware was a program for BBC Microcomputers with teletext adaptors. They worked on BBC Basic, a coding software which pretty much allowed for users to create their own teletext style pages. It seems the graphics are a bit more advanced also but the white on black aesthetic remains.

Left is a screenshot from a test page. Believe it or not, there is a BBC Micro emulation program which allows PC users to experience the original.

Andrew Wiseman's Television room

More Misc. teletext pages

If I were to design my own teletext pages, I feel that looking at existing examples of good design is necessary to get some inspiration.
This design, from a German teletext page, makes use of the bold white on red and blue on yellow. Interesting to note that some aesthetic decisions are based on colour contrasts: for example red on yellow might be too much of a clash, whereas yellow on red is deemed to be fine. The blue on red isn't quite working though, and the purple on yellow doesn't show up all that well.
This colour scheme of red on white works better but the blue and red areas are staring to clash once more. Only on teletext could a designer get away with juxtaposing two such strong colours. Pixel mapping, an often underused technique, is also used here to render the Sky Box Office logo.
The above screenshot from Ceefax in 1983 is crowded but that's part of its appeal. Trying to stuff as much information on a page as possible is a trademark of the early teletext transmissions - mainly due to the high cost of having a larger number of pages (£50 per page when Ceefax began).Another crowded page, this time from the commercial service on Sky. I like this because there's a lot going on at once: aside from the main focus of the page - the weather forecast - there is room for an advertisement and a premium rate phone number and even some index links.

Screenshots from Teletext then and Now

The teletext photo printer

I didn't know this existed until today, when I found the above photo from DGJones on Flickr. Much like the modern digital camera/memory card printer, this was a built in function in special television models that allowed for the user to print off a teletext screen, presumably around photo size.

Can't find much info about this online but it would have been useful for printing out information about holidays or lottery numbers for purposes of archiving. Seems as though the technology never took off, as I have never come across one of these before. I want one though.

If I could somehow get hold of a series of these printouts it would be a good resource point for the print aspect of this project, or at least an idea for a layout.

Teletext functionalities

Teletext is navigated using a remote control. The format has many functionalities for getting around the numerous electronic pages held on the teletext database. These are all related to navigation methods on other information retrieval services.

• Number entry system. The number entry page navigation system is a method relatively unique to the format, though it borrows from book/magazine page numbering. Similarities can also be drawn with automated telephone call centres which are navigated by entering numbers on the telephone keypad. Indeed, this is how Viewdata works.
• Fastext is more like web browser functions and is closely related to the hyperlinking system, with a one-press/click labelled link navigating directly to the desired page. It is, in most cases, also quicker than internet linking, depending on the internet connection speed.
• Page Up/Down function is commonly used to scroll through the data on teletext. Can be compared to web browser scroll bars.
• Subpages. Due to shortage of space on individual pages, teletext services utilise subpages to transmit larger amounts of information. One teletext page can on average fit around 60 words in three line-separated paragraphs. This can be compared with mobile phone browsers which also have varying space restrictions and sometimes use subpages to transmit text.
• Hold function is a necessity with the automatic subpage scrolling on teletext. Can be linked with VCR/DVD pause buttons as well as the 'pause live TV' function on modern TV set top boxes. Apart from this, it's not really used that often in other media.
  
• Reveal Function. Javascript can be used to replicate the reveal function on the web browser to reveal some hidden information, e.g. pop up and drop down menus.
  
• Mix/in-vision function. A lot of the new interactive TV services provide a small television screen alongside the text information. Not the same as the old in-vision version though, as there is currently no function for 'sport boxes' and in-vision videprinters to be relayed over the top of the television picture. For the football, this has largely been overtaken by the interactive score service and for the cricket interactive scorecards are sometimes available.
• Current GMT date and time. A lot of modern set top boxes now have exact GMT time settings, but some still do not - the user has to manually input the time. Same goes for computers. There are wall clocks that have a built in signal received from Greenwich to synchronise their reading with the exact GMT.
• Random page function. On some controllers there is the option to flick to a random teletext page. This is related to the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button at google.com and more closely the wiki 'view random page' function.
• Alarm clock. This function has been applied to all sorts of formats from video recorders to mobile phones to computers. The teletext version is no longer available but there used to be a page specially for it on a number of teletext services.
  

Teletext as a television guide

One of, if not the centrepiece of teletext is the ability to look up television listings. This would seem a natural function, as the service is actually available on the television itself, negating the need for a paper based TV listings magazine. It is one service which has remained whilst others around it are slowly being removed.

In addition, some teletext services provide stories, news, gossip etc. in much the same way that a regular Sunday magazine supplement would, only with content updated more frequently. Ceefax used to have an extensive TV links section with recipes, calls for quiz show contestants and general information on the BBC's programmes. This is largely gone (above right), but a depleted version still exists on page 615. Teletext's TV pages (left) act as a more magazine orientated service with celebrity interviews and television-related stories. There's also a viewer's views page, a seemingly popular section considering the fact traditional teletext is in decline.

However, this isn't really that surprising as the content seen on the traditional teletext service is the same as that on Teletext's interactive television service. This, it seems, is the only thing keeping Teletext on the airwaves.

There are hundreds of television listings services online. Yahoo!'s provides links to TV clips, a function not possible on teletext. Also present are viewers' opinions. These are much more extensive than the Teletext service, the greater bandwidth allowing for more detailed discussion rather than just a sentence or two. The online format also allows for more visual representations of the television listings, such as the TV grid at Yahoo (right).

Other services, such as bleb.org and tveasy.co.uk are more straight factual services and provide a no-nonsense quick reference guide more like those listings found on teletext. It could be argued, though, that these are still more efficient than teletext's in that, since bandwidth is not at a premium, there is no need to wait for the appropriate subpage to appear. Ceefax combat this by removing old subpages from the daily listings as the programmes are shown, meaning that by the prime time slot only one or two subpages have to be navigated.

Despite their obvious benefits, the television listing can still be slightly misleading, however.

Teletext vs Wikipedia

Wikipedia is, like teletext, an information retrieval service. Launched in 2001 at the height of the second internet boom as an online encyclopedia, it was unique in that it invited and encouraged the readers of the site themselves to contribute to building the knowledge database. This is in contrast to teletext which is programmed entirely by an exclusive employed team.

However, Wikipedia's predecessor, the now defunct Nupedia, was initially written by a team of experts, much like a paper encyclopedia, with the aim of providing free-licensed content. All teletext content is subject to individual copyright, but Wikipedia is licensed under the GDFL, meaning its content can be freely distributed in its unedited format, commercially or noncommercially.

Being an online service, Wikipedia naturally has the ability to transmit more content at a faster speed than teletext. Whereas teletext condenses information down to one or two sentence paragraphs, Wikipedia has the space and bandwidth to go into much more detail. Comparisons between teletext and the Simple English Wikipedia can be drawn, however, in their aims to articulate information in as simple terms as possible. The tabloid newspaper could also be placed in the same category, with its vocabulary limited in order to reach as large a reader base as possible. The BBC's Newsround (which is also broadcast on Ceefax) and many teletext services for children's channels utilise a simplified vocabulary to match the language skills of the reader base.

In other words, they use language that a teacher might use with schoolchildren. In this way, these formats could be seen as informal teaching aids, teletext helping children to learn colour and shape association, language and electronic interaction skills.

One function common to both Wikipedia and teletext is the ability to jump to a random page. On remote controls there is a button which brings up a random teletext page, whilst Wikipedia, like most wikis, has a 'Random page' text link on the sidebar. This function can be compared to Google's 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button when searching the web, only the user has no input as to what may appear.

Much like other internet sites and technologies, Wikipedia has continued to grow, almost exponentially, since its creation. A single teletext service, due to bandwidth restrictions, only has the capability to grow to a certain size. Indeed, since 2000 Ceefax and Teletext have been continually downsizing, moving and removing pages from the service. The popularity of teletext, if anything, has declined and these measures are a reaction to this.

It seems these factors, along with the greater ability to interact with and modify content, prove that Wikipedia will be the more popular information retrieval service in years to come. That is, unless the capability of teletext develops significantly. Maybe one day Interactive television will provide access to Wikipedia?

A bit about subtitles

Teletext brought along with it closed captioning, a method of relaying the speech into text for the hard of hearing/deaf. It seems teletext pioneered the service which today is more popular than ever - almost all programmes on the BBC are subtitled. Also used as a translation service (for example programmes such as S4C's Pobol y Cwm are broadcast in Welsh but have English subtitles) the method makes television more accessible to a wider range of people.

Open captioning, which existed prior to closed captioning, meant printing the actual words onto the screen. This method is often used in films as an alternative to overdubbing with voice actors. Closed captioning is submitted via teletext in the vertical line blanking interval of televisions with appropriate encoders.

BBC's new iPlayer apparently has teething problems with subtitles but once they are sorted it will be the next step in subtitling:



About.com - a history of closed captioning
Subtitles, from Wikipedia

Home made teletext

Teletext, it would seem, is still very popular in Estonia. Tarmo Tanilsoo, the creator of this website which I have mentioned in an earlier post, has uploaded a video to YouTube. It contains some experiments he made in creating a home made teletext system, formatted in 'Pages from Ceefax' style:

Though experimental, this is really cool. I love the graph - maybe I could do something similar for results of my questionnaire?

Elsewhere, I found this site he also created. It is similar in navigation structure to the other mentioned site, but is in Estonian so I don't know what's going on most of the time. Seems like it also used an embedded Javascript code to navigate pages.