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.

More on the death of teletext

The BBC don't seem to like the fact people are using Ceefax online. This article from the Inquirer mentions the fact that the BBC are furious at the online teletext browser at Ceefax.tv. The site itself uses a very clever interface that grabs analogue data and converts it to the HTTP format. Created by Hendrik Noorderhaven, it allows people to view a variety of teletext systems via the internet.

It seems that this software can be used on mobile phones with compatible browsers: the Ceefax site also has sub pages for mobile teletext. Maybe the BBC feel they are missing out on another money making opportunity?

This blog entry has some interesting information about the teletext cross-media content service. Apparently there is a limit to the headline lengths so it can fit on teletext:

"Believe it or not, the BBC’s content production system makes you choose a headline of 31-33 characters, which is pretty precise. This is so it can work on Ceefax and mobile phones, as well as the web."

When Saturday Comes is a popular football fanzine. This article laments the death of the traditional format, used by fans to keep up to date with the latest scores, pools news and a bunch of other statistical based information:

"The real replacement for football on Ceefax is the kind of round-table you-watch-the-pros-watch-football show available on Sky Sports and the BBC. You know the kind of thing. Gordon McQueen, Paul Walsh and Tony Cottee stare at a TV screen and tell you that Blackburn have just won a free-kick but it’s come to nothing still 0-0 at Ewood Park, Jeff. This is essentially Ceefax, but a crazily over-manned version with a human face."

Perhaps the new interactive TV service is part of the BBC's overall attempt to bring a more human element into the whole teletext experience? After all, with the traditional format, all you had was text and the occasional simple graphic. Now, there is scope for video and photographic elements which, whilst adding to the experience, are maybe overcomplicating things. All people want to get is the information they came for. I must say from experience that the new interactive BBCi service is confusing and too menu-driven. Sure, you get a nice little window of the channel so you can watch TV whilst browsing text, but people don't want this - they just want the information. And anyway teletext always had this in the mix function.

Sources

The Register
The Inquirer
Ceefax.tv mobile
Chrisdoidge.co.uk
When Saturday Comes

Case Study - Bamboozle

Years back, when teletext was King, Channel 4's Teletext service had a full section entitled 'Fun and Games'. Now, though, the fun is largely gone and the service is becoming serious in its old age. The Fun and Games section is no more, but its flagship Bamboozle game remains. Having been moved around the service like no other page - from the 100s to the 300s - this is the one of the only surviving examples of games transmitted by teletext, at least in the UK.

Originally Bamboozle was a daily updated game with twenty questions. This was cut to fifteen and currently twelve, yet another measure of teletext's dwindling user base. Still, the game is at least still going, as is its main quizmaster character - Bamber Boozler. An obvious clone of Bamber Gascoigne, right down to the pixellated face, he has become something of an icon for the Teletext generation. Maybe his pixellated mug will live on into the Internet generation?

The object of the game is to get as many questions right as possible. Each question has four answers which can be selected from using the coloured fastext keys. If you get one wrong, you are sent back to an earlier question (what? Can't be bothered...) and have to re-enter up to three previous answers to get back to where you were. This used to annoy me, but hey, that's the limitations of teletext. I have encountered a few online quizzes that work on the same principle and they have the capability to go right back to the last question you got wrong. Maybe this is a bandwidth issue or they want people to play for longer?

Each question had its own page - and to stop peple from cheating these were named with letters: for example "34D" or "67A", so they could not be directly accessed by entering the number code.

Links

Wikipedia entry
Bamber's web page (There's nothing there at the moment)
YTMD tribute

The decline of Teletext continues

Teletext will come a small step closer to its inevitable demise at the end of the year, with Ceefax finishing their horse racing coverage: Beeb pulls plug on racing coverage article.

Some people aren't too happy about this:

My elderly father always uses the Ceefax service for his horse racing results. He has never even used a PC let alone accessed a webpage.

I suppose in the BBC's eyes he doesn't fit into a trendy enough demographic!

- Steve R, London, UK

Others ask why the medium cannot live alongside interactive TV. Well, the hope is that interactive TV will replace the traditional service, providing a more in-depth version. Traditionalists bemoan the fall of the pixel format which has been with the nation for so long just being phased out like that.

Walking into a betting shop used to be an experience - the plethora of television screens, most showing teletext pages, people staring at them, betting slip in hand. This will be one enduring image of British working life that will die out - the teletext part, at least.

A bit more on formats

Teletext is no stranger to re-contextualisation. In the last few years it has been ripped apart, bludgeoned, streamlined and fancified all in the name of progress. With the introduction of interactive TV, the traditional format is dying out. I'm not sure if HD supports the traditional teletext format, I have only seen pictures of it with interactive TV. However there are adverts for TVs that are labelled teletext: HD ready. If this is possible, it would be interesting to see the old teletext aesthetic on this new, ultra-modern medium, even if it is contrived.

Likewise, I would like to see traditional teletext on an iPod. I don't even know if this is possible but it would make for an interesting piece of contextual artwork, contrasting the old, almost defunct, with a new, thriving medium. Note that the image to the right is a mock-up of what teletext may look like. I don't know if iPods have internet browsers but if they do this is what teletext might be like.

Apple do provide a teletext widget for Macs:

Mac teletext viewer

It is definitely possible to get teletext on your mobile. The below images prove this:

This isn't just a text service - the image on the right shows someone using teletext on their mobile in the traditional format.

Bring back teletext?

On a day when 5 Live ran a news story on the 'bring back Wispa chocolate bars' campaign, I set out to look for similar campaigns for teletext. Surely a phase of the technology will be lost when the analogue switch off comes.

The search proved somewhat fruitless. Maybe this could be a gap in the market - for my project I could create a kind of campaign website, for example with the name 'TRUMP' (Teletext Revival Unified Members Project) to jointly celebrate the life of teletext as well as attempting to gain recognition for the 'death of teletext'.

I explored this idea a bit more in my notebook, so be on the lookout for that...

Bring Back Wispa!