5 ms·

Here in the UK, the BBC has something they call the "red button" feature - most of the time, it just brings up "teletext 2.0" with some news headlines etc. but

Here in the UK, the BBC has something they call the "red button" feature - most of the time, it just brings up "teletext 2.0" with some news headlines etc. but when there's something like the olympics on, you can use it to switch between coverage of different events. On my "dumb" TV that is not and never will be connected to the 'net, this feature works fine and has done so for years. On my friend's "smart" TV, the red button feature has been replaced by an "app" that we had to update and fiddle with to get it working, and it won't do anything at all without an internet connection despite the key feature just being a kind of switch between two sub-channels, both of which are served over the usual aerial/cable. You can't even turn this off to get the normal red button back.

thisone 10y ago
Looks like smart TVs may have Red Button+ which gets its data differently than dumb TVs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Red_Button https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Red_Button
memsom 10y ago
That works on FreeView by broadcasting extra channels. They have something like 2 to 4 slots I think. It's nothing more than smoke and mirrors really, and there is still an element of software getting in there - it just switches you to the appropriate channel in the background.
- brassic 10y ago
  There's not much smoke even. The red button channels are normal channels at 600 and 601. If the red button is broken you can switch to them directly. And switching directly is usually quicker than navigating the red button nonsense.