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I am shocked that no one is talking about Teletext! I am guessing it wasn’t a thing in US or I am the oldest person to comment so far? I had forgotten that Tel

I am shocked that no one is talking about Teletext! I am guessing it wasn’t a thing in US or I am the oldest person to comment so far? I had forgotten that Teletext existed until this post. And for those who know about BBSs, Teletext was the closest thing before modems. I don’t remember seeing the wild Teletext Ascii art etc. as seen in the post though. UK seems to have had mad Teletext.

dailykoder 2y ago
I think most of the TV stations in germany still have it. At least the big ones. And it's still filled with mostly ads.
- omnibrain 2y ago
  For ARD (Das Erste) you can find it here: https://www.ard-text.de/ https://www.ard-text.de/
casper14 2y ago
The Netherlands still has it. They even updated it recently because a lot of people are still using it.
davidmurphy 2y ago
US didn't have it to my knowledge, so it was indeed a novelty when visiting Europe in the 90s to experience it.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  We did have it in the States; it just wasn't ever very broadly adopted. Circa 1992, a friend's house had a then-fancy Zenith TV that supported Teletext, which was unusual at the time. IIRC it worked with exactly one cable channel in our town, TBS, and it had a fair variety of news and information. I enjoyed playing around with it when I visited, much to my friend's bemusement. Eventually, TVs with Teletext (and closed captioning) became much more common, but by then the ship had sailed. The service was NLA by the time we had a TV with these capabilities in our own home.
  - sumtechguy 2y ago
    I may have had that same zenith tv. In my town we had 2 channels that did anything with it. One was basically a static summary of whatever was on. The other was pretty cool with stocks and weather and news. But mid 90s they turned it off. Never tried TBS. Guess I should have.
Ylpertnodi 2y ago
>Teletext. And damnation on the manufacturers of the red button that never worked.
DrBazza 2y ago
Everyone used to book their summer holidays from Teletext. The Peter Kay sketch about this is quite amusing. I thought, though I might be wrong, back in the UK we broadcast on 650 lines, and the top or bottom 25 lines were reserved for teletext and also IIRC timing signals, that could start/stop VCRs automatically but was never used in the UK. The teletext signal was tiny in modern terms, it was extremely similar to the BBC Micro 'Mode 7' in size. The article mentions that VHS 'compressed' the signal. I don't think that was the case, I think it filtered the analogue signal and chopped off the teletext info, but some of it used to leak through, hence the opportunity to recover it. Then there was Macrovision that fiddled with those not-quite filtered lines to add bursts of colour that would leak through to stop tape-to-tape piracy. Fun fact: a magazine published a circuit that would remove Macrovision that was then widely photocopied and distributed in the UK. You could order the parts from Tandy or RadioShack, and we took it to school and had (a lot) of help from the teacher putting them together as part of our CDT/tech classes. The rest, is as they say, history.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  The start/stop VCR thing was called PDC, and IIRC it worked in the UK, as long as you'd set your VCR to the exact scheduled times of the program: https://625.uk.com/pdc/ https://625.uk.com/pdc/
  - DrBazza 2y ago
    Thanks for that. I hadn't realised it was a feature in UK VCRs. I can't say I remember anyone ever using it.
duckson 2y ago
Right? Here in the Netherlands, Teletext is still very much alive and has several millions of users per week. [1] In fact, at the end of 2023 our public broadcaster rewrote the Teletext backend system using modern programming practices to keep it running into the future. [2] Before that it was running on software from the 80's. [1] https://over.nos.nl/nieuws/teletekst-kan-weer-jaren-vooruit-met-nieuw-systeem/ https://over.nos.nl/nieuws/teletekst-kan-weer-jaren-vooruit-... [2] https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-teletekst-de-nos-over-het-gloednieuwe-oude-systeem.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-...
zeristor 2y ago
I was surprised too, I am closing hundreds of open tabs, and nearly closed this until I read the original article and was amazed at how cool this is. I have a few hundred VHS tapes from the eighties, mostly Saturday Morning Open University lectures, and whilst I'm intrigued to run these through, I'd need a VCR too.

dailykoder 2y ago

I think most of the TV stations in germany still have it. At least the big ones. And it's still filled with mostly ads.

omnibrain 2y ago
For ARD (Das Erste) you can find it here: https://www.ard-text.de/ https://www.ard-text.de/

casper14 2y ago

The Netherlands still has it. They even updated it recently because a lot of people are still using it.

davidmurphy 2y ago

US didn't have it to my knowledge, so it was indeed a novelty when visiting Europe in the 90s to experience it.

ssl-3 2y ago
We did have it in the States; it just wasn't ever very broadly adopted. Circa 1992, a friend's house had a then-fancy Zenith TV that supported Teletext, which was unusual at the time. IIRC it worked with exactly one cable channel in our town, TBS, and it had a fair variety of news and information. I enjoyed playing around with it when I visited, much to my friend's bemusement. Eventually, TVs with Teletext (and closed captioning) became much more common, but by then the ship had sailed. The service was NLA by the time we had a TV with these capabilities in our own home.
- sumtechguy 2y ago
  I may have had that same zenith tv. In my town we had 2 channels that did anything with it. One was basically a static summary of whatever was on. The other was pretty cool with stocks and weather and news. But mid 90s they turned it off. Never tried TBS. Guess I should have.

Ylpertnodi 2y ago

>Teletext. And damnation on the manufacturers of the red button that never worked.

DrBazza 2y ago

Everyone used to book their summer holidays from Teletext. The Peter Kay sketch about this is quite amusing. I thought, though I might be wrong, back in the UK we broadcast on 650 lines, and the top or bottom 25 lines were reserved for teletext and also IIRC timing signals, that could start/stop VCRs automatically but was never used in the UK. The teletext signal was tiny in modern terms, it was extremely similar to the BBC Micro 'Mode 7' in size. The article mentions that VHS 'compressed' the signal. I don't think that was the case, I think it filtered the analogue signal and chopped off the teletext info, but some of it used to leak through, hence the opportunity to recover it. Then there was Macrovision that fiddled with those not-quite filtered lines to add bursts of colour that would leak through to stop tape-to-tape piracy. Fun fact: a magazine published a circuit that would remove Macrovision that was then widely photocopied and distributed in the UK. You could order the parts from Tandy or RadioShack, and we took it to school and had (a lot) of help from the teacher putting them together as part of our CDT/tech classes. The rest, is as they say, history.

rahimnathwani 2y ago
The start/stop VCR thing was called PDC, and IIRC it worked in the UK, as long as you'd set your VCR to the exact scheduled times of the program: https://625.uk.com/pdc/ https://625.uk.com/pdc/
- DrBazza 2y ago
  Thanks for that. I hadn't realised it was a feature in UK VCRs. I can't say I remember anyone ever using it.

duckson 2y ago

Right? Here in the Netherlands, Teletext is still very much alive and has several millions of users per week. [1] In fact, at the end of 2023 our public broadcaster rewrote the Teletext backend system using modern programming practices to keep it running into the future. [2] Before that it was running on software from the 80's. [1] https://over.nos.nl/nieuws/teletekst-kan-weer-jaren-vooruit-met-nieuw-systeem/ https://over.nos.nl/nieuws/teletekst-kan-weer-jaren-vooruit-... [2] https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-teletekst-de-nos-over-het-gloednieuwe-oude-systeem.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-...

zeristor 2y ago

I was surprised too, I am closing hundreds of open tabs, and nearly closed this until I read the original article and was amazed at how cool this is. I have a few hundred VHS tapes from the eighties, mostly Saturday Morning Open University lectures, and whilst I'm intrigued to run these through, I'd need a VCR too.