More on the digital switchover

This week, the beginning of the end of traditional teletext was signalled. The first analogue signal was switched off in Whitehaven, Cumbria. In this part of the world, BBC2, along with CEEFAX 2, is gone and the other teletext services are to follow soon after.

Telegraph: Britain gets ready to flick the digital switch

Quote, from Andy:

"On analogue teletext you can switch teletext on and off instantly and rapidly scan through stories/ sports scores etc with just one press of a 'fastext' button.
On digital teletext (Freeview) it can take about 15 seconds for the digital text to even appear, then you have to arrow around and press 'OK' to get the category you want, then more arrowing around to select a story then a wait longer than dial-up internet before the story even appears.
Foreign satellite digital channels manage to re-insert the analogue teletext back into the digital transmission. Why can't the UK do that?"

One customer who is a bit annoyed at the newer technologies. It might be a case of interactive TV catching up with teletext in the case of speed. Certainly my Freeview box is slow loading and teletext keeps crashing. That never happened on the old, analogue version.

Digital Switchover - Wikipedia entry

Wikipedia can be good for collections of information, and in many ways it's better than a regular encyclopaedia. This entry covers the technical specifics on the old and new signals.

"Another issue is that the "98.5 per cent of the population" can only be achieved "via rooftop aerials", while Section 134 of the Communications Act (2003) sets out the principle "that no person should unreasonably be denied access to an electronic communications network or to electronic communications services".This is taken to mean that everyone has the right to mount a television aerial on their roof."

Interesting that this means people can still have analogue aerials even though in a few years' time they will be obsolete. The article continues to mention that HDTV will be the next big technological advancement. I wonder if they will be updating interactive TV for this?

Newsnight: Where should the BBC spend its money?

Interesting article on Newsnight a few days ago, looking at the BBC's job cuts. Part of this was the 'hacking up' of thousands of archived articles from the BBC website. This shows an inclination towards online information retrieval - and subsequently interactive TV, which is from the same information/text feed as the teletext service and website.