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Last weekend at Assembly[0] there was a teletext entry in the wild compo[1][2] I know people who use one of the various ios apps to watch the local public broa

by scoopr 10y ago

Last weekend at Assembly[0] there was a teletext entry in the wild compo[1][2] I know people who use one of the various ios apps to watch the local public broadcasting teletext (teksti-tv), because it is a fast and easy way to look at the news, with descriptive titles without clickbaits :) Web versions of course available too[3] [0] http://www.assembly.org http://www.assembly.org [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_To2TwIrWqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_To2TwIrWqQ [2] http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67927 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67927 [3] http://www.yle.fi/tekstitv/html/P100_01.html http://www.yle.fi/tekstitv/html/P100_01.html

voltagex_ 10y ago
Mentioned at the end of that demo: https://github.com/ali1234/raspi-teletext https://github.com/ali1234/raspi-teletext Now I really want to write a HackerNews -> VTT app!
SwellJoe 10y ago
"FPS: Maybe" That's awesome. I grew up in the US, so had no awareness of this system, at all. It was really surreal reading about it (and the French Minitel, etc.) when the Internet started becoming popular; it was inevitably compared to the existing services that provided some of the same capabilities. I was like, "WTF? Why didn't I have access to anything like that when I was a kid? That sounds awesome!"
david-given 10y ago
The BBC Micro, one of the most popular 8-bit micros in the UK, contained a teletext decoder chip, the Mullard SAA5050. (There was an addon available that would let you display Ceefax pages displayed over the air with it; for a while they even broadcast programs using the Ceefax system, which you could download.) It was mainly used as a cheap and cheerful display mode, as it consumed a mere 1kB of video memory and got you fast, colourful, chunky graphics, and at the same time gave an entire generation detailed knowledge of the innards of the teletext system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqzkGkIrbd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqzkGkIrbd8 It was a pig to program for: it was (mostly) just a simple 40x25 array of bytes, one for each character. Special effects were done by using command bytes, which showed up (mostly) as a space. So, to change the foreground colour to red, you used a 129 byte. But that used up a character. Getting good effects took skill. Notice the way in that game the colours are separated by line? That's because there'll be two control bytes at the beginning of each line, one to set the colour and one to set block graphics mode, and the visible portion occupies the other 38 characters...

by scoopr 10y ago

voltagex_ 10y ago

Mentioned at the end of that demo: https://github.com/ali1234/raspi-teletext https://github.com/ali1234/raspi-teletext Now I really want to write a HackerNews -> VTT app!

SwellJoe 10y ago

"FPS: Maybe" That's awesome. I grew up in the US, so had no awareness of this system, at all. It was really surreal reading about it (and the French Minitel, etc.) when the Internet started becoming popular; it was inevitably compared to the existing services that provided some of the same capabilities. I was like, "WTF? Why didn't I have access to anything like that when I was a kid? That sounds awesome!"

david-given 10y ago

The BBC Micro, one of the most popular 8-bit micros in the UK, contained a teletext decoder chip, the Mullard SAA5050. (There was an addon available that would let you display Ceefax pages displayed over the air with it; for a while they even broadcast programs using the Ceefax system, which you could download.) It was mainly used as a cheap and cheerful display mode, as it consumed a mere 1kB of video memory and got you fast, colourful, chunky graphics, and at the same time gave an entire generation detailed knowledge of the innards of the teletext system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqzkGkIrbd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqzkGkIrbd8 It was a pig to program for: it was (mostly) just a simple 40x25 array of bytes, one for each character. Special effects were done by using command bytes, which showed up (mostly) as a space. So, to change the foreground colour to red, you used a 129 byte. But that used up a character. Getting good effects took skill. Notice the way in that game the colours are separated by line? That's because there'll be two control bytes at the beginning of each line, one to set the colour and one to set block graphics mode, and the visible portion occupies the other 38 characters...