Why Teletext Changed How We Live

For some people, teletext was just something that had always been there. But for certain older people like me, who can remember TV before teletext, it was a godsend. Before this the idea of instantly finding out the latest news, weather or sports scores was impossible. Teletext changed all that, in 40 columns and 24 rows of blocky text and gaudy graphics. And it became popular despite the expense of teletext capable TVs. But where did the idea come from, why wasn’t it a thing in the USA, and why is it back - on the Internet?

Link to my other channel - Big Car:

Sources:

#littlecar

[MirkoC]

Ah, good old Videotext as it was called in Germany. Thanks to it I have one of my best memories in life. It is August 11th, 1999 just after 4 AM CEST - the day of the solar eclipse. I turned on the TV on SWR3 regional program, covering all 4 possible destinations: Saarbrücken, Karlsruhe, Freiburg and Stuttgart. It was supposed to be a bad day for looking upwards but weather forecast on Videotext predicted best chances for Karlsruhe, so I went there. In the end Karlsruhe turned out to be one of only a handful of places in Germany within the umbral shadow to not being overcast. Without Videotext I would probably have travelled to Stuttgart and had seen only a dark cloud ceiling getting even darker.

[torresalex]

Fascinating stuff. Teletext was like a miracle back in the 80s, it was the internet before the internet

[spartan.falbion]

The 1970s Teletext system, called TV-text, is used in Sweden to this day. I will never forget the first time I used Ceefax.

[tigglepig]

For those who may be interested, the ITV’s teletext service ORACLE was named thus: Optical Reception of Announcements by Coded Line Electronics !

I actually miss teletext, great video 👏👏👏

[rorymacve]

That takes me back! I remember as a small boy in the mid-1990s lying on my parent's bed with my brother as they filed through Teletex first thing in the morning. We thought we were living in the future back then! 😎

[Rob]

Pity that so many TV channels have terminated Teletext service. Here in the Netherlands the public TV channels still have it, but commercial channels all have closed down Teletext except for subtitling.
Ironic that the country where it was invented closed it down as one of the first public channels....

[wrexhammusic]

Music From Ceefax provided music in the background of many a late night conversation, card game or board game back in the day.

[AlexWillmer]

Around 1999 I interned at Philips Semiconductors in Southampton. One of the managers was heavily involved in the early days of Teletext. He was quite proud/smug that (by happy accident, I think) the UK Teletext character set had included the @ symbol, so it could display these now fangled Internet email addresses. Other European character sets had allocated that valuable slot to various accented characters.

[mpersad]

A terrifically researched and illustrated video. Top work, and thank you for all your hard work on your great channel.

[SharpblueCreative]

We had our own television station in Swindon from 1973 to 2000 - Swindon Cable. This had its own teletext service included. It also used BBC Micro Mode 7 to display information. It was called ThornTel as it was Thorn EMI who set up the local TV service here.

[ivar_the_engine_driver]

When I discovered it on my uncle's TV set I was like struck by lightning, I stopped caring about my family and started toying with that miraculous thing for all afternoon. Just on the car ride back home started pestering my dad to get a TV with it (had to wait for years, btw).
In Italy it was called Televideo.

[wtfhaveidone]

I grew up in the US in the '70s and '80s and this is the first time I have ever heard of this technology.

[jnwalsh]

Brilliant video, and all those nostalgic clips from the 70's 80's & 90's! Ireland's Teletext service 'AerTel' which launched in 1987 was just retired this week - end of an era...

[gregc]

I never forget the weird feeling I got when I tried to see ceefax football scores on an old VHS tv recording. It was like a scrambled time machine.

[BOABModels]

My first job was at a newsagent and remember getting up for the early shift when ceefax was on before the scheduled programmes had started.
You'd just stream something now if watching at 5am I expect.

[mr.y.mysterious.video]

as a kid visited my aunt and uncles house. they had a new TV. I spent about 2 hours reading teletext. BBC, itv and channel 4 all had their own pages. there was genuinely a great variety of pages. music reviews, movie reviews, news, video games and more. asked for a teletext portable set from argos for Xmas and I was looking forward to it every day for around 6 months. it actually dominated my daily thoughts. while time marches on I do still miss it

[dj_paultuk]

It was super cool. I remember in the late 80's some of our American family came over to the UK to stay with us and they were just blown away by Teletext. They would actually sit for hours playing with our remote and browsing all the pages. Similar i took by brother-in-law to our local Library and i showed him Prestel on the library terminals. Again this was something they did not have so he was fascinated by it and the information that could be gained. Back then i would often go to the Library after school and use Prestel to help with my homework

[walkingtheboogie]

I still remember some of the page numbers.

I watched the Formula 1 growing up and after the Senna had his crash and the race was finished, I was checking teletext services to see if there was any news updates.

I think it was the Geeman station, RTL thatvfirst gave me an update. They had the headline: Senna ist Tot. In English, Senn is dead.

Eventually the news reached Ceefax

[wertywerrtyson]

I didn’t know it was developed in the UK. Text TV as we called it in Sweden was part of every day life growing up in the 90s. TVs were often advertised with how many pages of text they could hold in memory. I guess they didn’t have much else to advertise back then. It was that and NICAM Stereo that separates the higher end from the lower end. It was often on at my grandparents house so I think of my grandpa when I think of Text TV. Getting news through a service lack that actually sounds appealing even now. No ads or videos or too much text. Just a few lines of text of relevant information brought to you by a reliable source. These days the problem is too much information.

[Suprahampton]

Talk about blast from the past. I remember being a kid in the UK & whatever we were watching on tv when my Dad came home it'd go straight onto Ceeax or Oracle, we'd hove to go into the dining room with the b&w tv....this was in the late 80's early 90's