3 ms·

This post is going to baffle a lot of US readers. I moved to Ireland in 2006 and had never seen anything like ceefax (it's Aertel in Ireland). I love how old sc

This post is going to baffle a lot of US readers. I moved to Ireland in 2006 and had never seen anything like ceefax (it's Aertel in Ireland). I love how old school it is--feels like a early 80's video game. I admit I have found myself sitting at the pub "watching" scores refresh on a soccer/gaa match when it wasn't on TV and I didn't have my iphone. Teletext: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext Ceefax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax

Jamiecon 14y ago
> This post is going to baffle a lot of US readers. I must confess, this may have partially motivated my submission ;-) I also loved the style the article was presented in. Does anyone remember 'Bamboozle'?
- ppod 14y ago
  Bamboozle really exploited the potential of teletext. They could have had a text-adventure game on there. More people must have played that game than anyone realized, every time I hear a nostalgia discussion about teletext somebody says..."you didn't happen to play that quiz thing on Channel 4 did you?"
- amirmc 14y ago
  Yes! That's the first thing I thought when I saw this article. My family used to play whenever a new quiz went up. There were also other pages with jokes where hitting 'reveal' on the remote control toggled the punchline. None of the other pages we visited ever seemed to make as much use of the remote buttons as the 'games' and fun items did.
- gravitystorm 14y ago
  As soon as anyone says "Ceefax" or "Teletext" I think of Bamboozle. I'm glad to see I'm not alone and there's even a wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozle Not mentioned there, but there was one geek aspect of Bamboozle that I remember. Given that a wrong answer would (at the time I played) send you back to the beginning, it was tempting to try and note down the three-digit page number of the question, to cheat and skip back to the latest question. But the use of the 4 coloured buttons meant that the questions could use page numbers with hex letters in them - e.g. 34F - rendering them impossible to type in with a remote control. Sneaky, but it was a source of pride when I had figured out not only that they used letters, but why they used only A-F. Also, Bamboozle inspired me to waste many hours making drawings on my (even by then) old BBC Model B's Mode 7 graphics.
  - coroxout 14y ago
    Still not a perfect cheating deterrent, as when in doubt you could press each button and see which one led to a unique page, as the wrong 3 answers all led to the same losing page. On my set, at least, you could change which page you were waiting for before it loaded, so you could usually check all 4 in the few seconds between dialling up a page and the data for that page arriving. I often did this, perhaps I should be ashamed to admit. Haven't looked at Teletext in years (though for some reason last year I needed the "what's on now and next" page and found I could still remember the number) but I have fond memories of Bamboozle, Digitiser and the kids' and music pages, Mega-zine and Planet Sound.
moylan 14y ago
aertel is still going for the mo. and you can see the pages on the web. which is handy for when the web is on a go slow. http://www.aertel.ie/aertel/ http://www.aertel.ie/aertel/ tvs with teletext cost about £20-30 more last time i bought a tv but you got the money back in savings on buying tv guides as you could use teletext for the listings.
joezydeco 14y ago
In Chicago, they tried a non-interactive version of Ceefax (renamed "Keyfax"). It ran on an independent UHF station (WFLD-32, now Fox) late at night after normal programming had ended. Wow, remember that? Stations actually signed off for the night. The longer story is that the Sun-Times and Honeywell tried to launch Ceefax here, but the british-designed decoders would need a few years to get approved by Underwriters Labs, so the static service ran ahead of the launch. When Keyfax actually launched, it flopped. It was also shitcanned by Rupert Murdoch, who had bought the Sun-Times in the 80s and was quoted as saying "I do not believe that tomorrow's newspaper will be delivered on a TV screen". Anyway, here's some nostalgia and a capture of the Keyfax system. It was kind of boring after a while: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fvC6mdAK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fvC6mdAK8

Jamiecon 14y ago

> This post is going to baffle a lot of US readers. I must confess, this may have partially motivated my submission ;-) I also loved the style the article was presented in. Does anyone remember 'Bamboozle'?

ppod 14y ago
Bamboozle really exploited the potential of teletext. They could have had a text-adventure game on there. More people must have played that game than anyone realized, every time I hear a nostalgia discussion about teletext somebody says..."you didn't happen to play that quiz thing on Channel 4 did you?"
amirmc 14y ago
Yes! That's the first thing I thought when I saw this article. My family used to play whenever a new quiz went up. There were also other pages with jokes where hitting 'reveal' on the remote control toggled the punchline. None of the other pages we visited ever seemed to make as much use of the remote buttons as the 'games' and fun items did.
gravitystorm 14y ago
As soon as anyone says "Ceefax" or "Teletext" I think of Bamboozle. I'm glad to see I'm not alone and there's even a wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozle Not mentioned there, but there was one geek aspect of Bamboozle that I remember. Given that a wrong answer would (at the time I played) send you back to the beginning, it was tempting to try and note down the three-digit page number of the question, to cheat and skip back to the latest question. But the use of the 4 coloured buttons meant that the questions could use page numbers with hex letters in them - e.g. 34F - rendering them impossible to type in with a remote control. Sneaky, but it was a source of pride when I had figured out not only that they used letters, but why they used only A-F. Also, Bamboozle inspired me to waste many hours making drawings on my (even by then) old BBC Model B's Mode 7 graphics.
- coroxout 14y ago
  Still not a perfect cheating deterrent, as when in doubt you could press each button and see which one led to a unique page, as the wrong 3 answers all led to the same losing page. On my set, at least, you could change which page you were waiting for before it loaded, so you could usually check all 4 in the few seconds between dialling up a page and the data for that page arriving. I often did this, perhaps I should be ashamed to admit. Haven't looked at Teletext in years (though for some reason last year I needed the "what's on now and next" page and found I could still remember the number) but I have fond memories of Bamboozle, Digitiser and the kids' and music pages, Mega-zine and Planet Sound.

moylan 14y ago

aertel is still going for the mo. and you can see the pages on the web. which is handy for when the web is on a go slow. http://www.aertel.ie/aertel/ http://www.aertel.ie/aertel/ tvs with teletext cost about £20-30 more last time i bought a tv but you got the money back in savings on buying tv guides as you could use teletext for the listings.

joezydeco 14y ago

In Chicago, they tried a non-interactive version of Ceefax (renamed "Keyfax"). It ran on an independent UHF station (WFLD-32, now Fox) late at night after normal programming had ended. Wow, remember that? Stations actually signed off for the night. The longer story is that the Sun-Times and Honeywell tried to launch Ceefax here, but the british-designed decoders would need a few years to get approved by Underwriters Labs, so the static service ran ahead of the launch. When Keyfax actually launched, it flopped. It was also shitcanned by Rupert Murdoch, who had bought the Sun-Times in the 80s and was quoted as saying "I do not believe that tomorrow's newspaper will be delivered on a TV screen". Anyway, here's some nostalgia and a capture of the Keyfax system. It was kind of boring after a while: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fvC6mdAK8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fvC6mdAK8