5 ms·

For reference on what teletext is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

chmod775 6y ago
I wonder how this could pass anyone who's now older than 10 years by. Are there countries that just never had (widespread adoption of) teletext? Most people probably haven't used or seen teletext in years, but I'd expect people to know what it is anyways because there's cultural references aplenty.
- throwanem 6y ago
  As far as I know, it was never implemented anywhere in the US. I don't think I was aware of its existence until some time in my 20s, and then only because I took an active interest in retro- and unusually constrained computing environments, and their allies such as oldschool information services.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > Are there countries that just never had (widespread adoption of) teletext? It was never really a thing in the US. There were a couple of short-lived attempts, but none of them ever caught on, and receiver hardware was rare.
  - leoc 6y ago
    IIUC the short version of the story is that PAL regions got Teletext while NTSC regions ended up with NTSC closed captioning instead?
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      Seems so. Teletext also supported subtitles (as we called it in Britain), by selecting Teletext page 888.
      - flingo 6y ago
        Last I checked, 888 still works on satellite, and most digital TV. Nothing there, but a page 100 telling you that there's no teletext, but page 888 still has subtitles on it.
- untog 6y ago
  Two things: 1. AFAIK NTSC doesn’t support it, so North America never had it. There were equivalent standards but not one universal one to unify around. 2. Are there that many cultural references? I’m struggling to think of many that I saw growing up and I’m in my thirties. It existed (and I used it a lot!) but it wasn’t exactly part of the cultural zeitgeist. The internet had already taken over.
  - wastedhours 6y ago
    I think the only cultural references I see are football-result nostalgia. Quite a few do still crop up though (and even more so, almost every day I get an ad for a Ceefax inspired mug with my team's results on it).
    - smcl 6y ago
      I too have fond memories of using Ceefax for my football news pre-internet - the ones I remember were I think "302" for general football homepage or "310" for Scottish football scores.
  - mwaitjmp 6y ago
    Teletext holidays is still going. It was a place where you could browse for last minute holiday deals as far as I remember. They have now transitioned to the web. https://www.teletextholidays.co.uk/ https://www.teletextholidays.co.uk/
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  21 years old here and this is the first I have seen it. At first after reading the wiki article I assumed they were talking about embedding closed captions in the vblank but I have literally never seen or heard anyone mention that you could create static "pages" over analogue tv.
- monadic2 6y ago
  In retrospect I probably have heard the term but it was not meaningful. I'm a north american.

I wonder how this could pass anyone who's now older than 10 years by. Are there countries that just never had (widespread adoption of) teletext? Most people probably haven't used or seen teletext in years, but I'd expect people to know what it is anyways because there's cultural references aplenty.

throwanem 6y ago
As far as I know, it was never implemented anywhere in the US. I don't think I was aware of its existence until some time in my 20s, and then only because I took an active interest in retro- and unusually constrained computing environments, and their allies such as oldschool information services.
duskwuff 6y ago
> Are there countries that just never had (widespread adoption of) teletext? It was never really a thing in the US. There were a couple of short-lived attempts, but none of them ever caught on, and receiver hardware was rare.
- leoc 6y ago
  IIUC the short version of the story is that PAL regions got Teletext while NTSC regions ended up with NTSC closed captioning instead?
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    Seems so. Teletext also supported subtitles (as we called it in Britain), by selecting Teletext page 888.
    - flingo 6y ago
      Last I checked, 888 still works on satellite, and most digital TV. Nothing there, but a page 100 telling you that there's no teletext, but page 888 still has subtitles on it.
untog 6y ago
Two things: 1. AFAIK NTSC doesn’t support it, so North America never had it. There were equivalent standards but not one universal one to unify around. 2. Are there that many cultural references? I’m struggling to think of many that I saw growing up and I’m in my thirties. It existed (and I used it a lot!) but it wasn’t exactly part of the cultural zeitgeist. The internet had already taken over.
- wastedhours 6y ago
  I think the only cultural references I see are football-result nostalgia. Quite a few do still crop up though (and even more so, almost every day I get an ad for a Ceefax inspired mug with my team's results on it).
  - smcl 6y ago
    I too have fond memories of using Ceefax for my football news pre-internet - the ones I remember were I think "302" for general football homepage or "310" for Scottish football scores.
- mwaitjmp 6y ago
  Teletext holidays is still going. It was a place where you could browse for last minute holiday deals as far as I remember. They have now transitioned to the web. https://www.teletextholidays.co.uk/ https://www.teletextholidays.co.uk/
Polylactic_acid 6y ago
21 years old here and this is the first I have seen it. At first after reading the wiki article I assumed they were talking about embedding closed captions in the vblank but I have literally never seen or heard anyone mention that you could create static "pages" over analogue tv.
monadic2 6y ago
In retrospect I probably have heard the term but it was not meaningful. I'm a north american.