Ceefax - A love letter | Hacker News Reader

Ceefax - A love letter

bbc.co.uk

60 pointsJamiecon37 comments

I used to work as a sub-editor for Teletext. Writing 35-character headlines for the analogue service was some of the best journalism training anybody could have. I still remember some of the best:

Spurs move right, said Fred's agent

Sizzling Gasquet batters sorry Fish

Fish Mardy from Del Potro battering

(we liked Mardy Fish losing badly at tennis, particularly if he also had a strop after)

For anybody with knowledge about British tennis out there, the following became a running joke which we rehashed at every opportunity.

Bogdanovic suffers first-round exit

That must have been used a mind-boggling number of times.

We also did subbing for Ceefax, with its extra paragraph - but I'll always have a bigger place in my heart for Teletext and its 40 x 24 character grids (for text, 35 for headlines).

Romantics ire after death of Ceefax

Probably the most interesting thing about Ceefax and the other teletext services was that it was a wonderful hack using the Vertical Blanking Interval between TV frames.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_Blanking_Interval and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext#Data_transmission

The VBI itself is a hang over to slow technology used in CRTs: The VBI was originally needed because of the inductive inertia of the magnetic coils which deflect the electron beam vertically in a CRT; the magnetic field, and hence the position being drawn, cannot change instantly. Additionally, the speed of older circuits was limited.

The idea for Ceefax came from the BBC who were researching ways to send subtitles for the hard of hearing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext#Development

And PRESTEL was another hack (and one produced by a PTT) they worked out they could produce an asymetric modem standard 75/1200 to work with the slow speed lines of the day.

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 Ceefax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax

> 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'?

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?"

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.

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

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.

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.

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/

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.

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

I was a bit young to make the most of Ceefax/Teletext but the one thing I truly loved and read many times a week for years was Digitiser on Channel 4's Teletext service.

It was a magazine about computer games, written in a fantastically stupid manner, full of daft jokes and innuendos and presented by a set of rather offensive characters (Fat Sow and Insincere Dave being my favourites).

The 'limited' graphics added to it, in my opinion. It was also, probably the only set of pages to make good use of the reveal button.

I remember Digitiser, it was wonderful. I get the feeling that Ceefax / Teletext was perhaps a redoubt for those who wanted to avoid too much editorial.

And, another use for the reveal button: Bamboozle!

Nice and nostalgic, but a few inaccuracies;

Firstly, it could do the basics very fast.

...if you had a fancy TV that cached the carousel index pages. If not you type in the page number you want and wait for it to cycle around in the carousel. Which could be pretty slow on Oracle, as all those holiday ads played out.

If you were amending a page, it went through instantly, when you change something on the web, it may go through instantly. Or it may not.

But if you're authoring for the MHEG interactive service on Freeview then it can get pushed straight away. Apples/oranges comparison, really.

Secondly, it provided an instant and BBC-certified timecheck, accurate to the second

As does Freeview, and all other DVB platforms. Most TVs have a button to tell you what time it is.

Bear in mind, it's from a TV viewer's perspective. It's fast compared to waiting for a news bulletin.

Here's how Ceefax used to be used for computer programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctxZWEVJ1S0

There was another way of getting programs from the TV used at the same time. A lightpen was attached to the TV screen and a flashing white square in the bottom right corner of the screen was used to transmit a program (a binary stream) through the lightpen and onto the micro.

Does anyone else remember this and on which program it was done? It may well have been Channel 4's Me and My Micro in about 1985.

Ah. This person says it was '4 Computer Buffs': http://www.tvcream.co.uk/?p=2347 Found it. Here's a video of how you had to make the 'receiver' for this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=89458723914479030 and here's an interview where there's the software being transmitted at the same time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULGDTtGZcN0

As an aside, during the 80s the BBC and some other European broadcasters also transmitted software over the radio using BASICODE [1]. I remember taping some of the transmissions, though I can't remember now whether I got any of them to load into whatever computer I had at the time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASICODE

"Programming through the screen" is still used today: http://www.aniomagic.com/sparkle/

I wonder if you could use this technique to transmit data to a phone via its camera?

I was so looking forward to a more 'web like' replacement for Ceefax/Teletext, to augment broadcasts. I never use the digital TV red button as it feels even slower than the 70s technology.

Add to that that I can't even read what is on the screen. At least I can read Ceefax. Perhaps it is because I don't have a TV display larger than 22".

The company that can add useful overlays to existing broadcasts - could clean up: think Twitter/Wikipedia on the telly. A use for something like raspberry pi?

I use the red button on BBC news a fair bit, but only after I hooked my set top box up to my router. It pulls everything in over IP then.

I didn't know you could do this, faster loads would help. But by the time you've done this you may as well just run some web services/pages.

Menus for set top boxes feel painfully slow to me. Maybe I'm just impatient.

But I'd love something that can overlay stuff - "now and next"; subtitles; tv schedules; 'your favourite programme is on in 5 minutes on the other side"; "Ann (who you trust) recommends this programme. Do you agree? [YES][NO]" (and it builds up a score of trust in some reviewers, enabling discovery of good programmes.

With a bit of human intervention you get some exciting possibilities. Links to (as you mention) Wikipedia would be awesome for instant checking. Some people would enjoy having tweets running on the tv.

Tie the news into a web search for other stories, or better analysis.

Agree - why so slow?

Would be nice to see an open implementation here. I was kind of thinking that Google Tv might be that. But you really need the ability to overlay the picture. I've considered placing a low resolution lcd next to the telly and doing something myself. Something text based would be fine, it wouldn't need a supercomputer.

When David Cameron visited the Queen to be signed in, I had a live Twitter feed running and it was hilarious. I like the alternative commentary. You could also do audio overlays - over the net. Or even (though a little Orwellian) a webcam to communicate with your mates, something like hangouts.

The smart TV landscape and digital services are pretty confusing. It was tricky enough choosing between Ceefax and Teletext.

Currently I resort to a laptop for lookups and my partner claws her smartphone - which is pretty antisocial, and you miss the action.

In the past I've thought about overlaying Twitter on live TV but don't watch live TV enough these days to be particularly motivated to follow through.

I even picked up a "Breakout Board for MAX7456 On Screen Display" http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9168 which combined with a networked Arduino should be enough to get something happening.

(I am available for consulting if you want someone else to do all the fun work for you. :) )

That's pretty cool. I was thinking about something similar. Just the ability to easily blend video signals. Say two inputs on the TV.

It would be good to then plugin a 'computer' something like the Raspberry Pi, that would overlay the existing signal, or merge two video inputs (Would this be simple digitally?).

It would be nice if there was meta info available alongside a program, that you could hook into somehow, so you could do something useful with it. A cue sheet or something. Having meta info about a playing scene could be useful. Digitized credits would be nice.

The biggest issue is with the move to digital from analogue TV signals. Then you have the issue that any significant high resolution image manipulation requires decent processing power.

Even more complications arise when you also factor in control technologies like HDCP.

I was about to mention work that had been done by a guy "bunnie" and discovered it's actually advanced from a hack to an actual product:

* http://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=NeTV_Main_Page

* http://adafruit.com/products/609

Looks like that could be exactly what you're looking for. :)

"The company that can add useful overlays to existing broadcasts..."

Try Chumby NeTV:

http://www.theverge.com/2011/9/8/2412828/chumby-netv-smart-t...

And you can buy a developer kit today from Adafruit, unlike the RPi.

http://www.adafruit.com/products/609

Thanks for this.

I wonder how this interferes with on device picture optimisation - scaling etc.

The leather always put me off the chumby.

NeTV is a completely different device. No plushy foam or anything. It's using a very clever hack to inject a signal into a HDCP stream. Check out the documentation.

See also a discussion here about Teletext, a similar service: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=996889

I know a lot of the older generation will miss it. Especially those that don't use traditional computers, yet regularly check the value of their shares etc.

I haven't used it in years so I don't have a problem of not being able to get that information, but I will still miss it nostalgically - I'm 22, so not exactly the older generation, but still grew up with ceefax being the best source for TV listings, news/sport, weather, and indeed stock prices (which without really understanding why I cared about because my dad cared about them).

Any afficionados of Ceefax might enjoy the spoof from the DVD of "Look Around You" - itself a wonderful pastiche on the BBC's 1970s "programmes for schools" public service broadcasts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfsBT8fQ7_I

RIP

For many, this type of TV technology was their first exposure to "technology".

I'm fairly sure if I develop any sort of vision impediment in future years, Ceefax will have contributed significantly to it.

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