Teletext - remember that?

Today is 45th birthday of the teletext of Finnish public broadcaster YLE. Still over 600 000 views daily.

yle.fi

Sivu 830 - Teksti-TV

Ylen Teksti-tv.
yle.fi yle.fi

Birthday pages and greetings from abroad, incl. UK - Sivu 842 - Teksti-TV

Also anyone who has satellite dish pointing to Thor 0,8W, can search 12476 H 30000 and read YLE TekstiTV without subscription from YLE channels.
 
It s been on all my remotes. France ditched it a long time ago (It was called "Antiope") ,but the Germans keep and use it a lot. As German TV is freely available on sat all over Europe,the German traveler gets his news from teletext plus complete EPG on the EPG knob of his zapper. Simple is'n t it?Same with Italy,Spain,Switzerland,Portugal. And ex-Yugoslavia.I vaguely remember Ceefax,but it s long gone.
 
ORF2 Europe still has teletext on Astra 19.2E.
 
My VMA Transport Stream Analyser (not free) can decode teletext, show the underlying code and especially dump all pages in *.tti format. These can be loaded back and browsed off-line.

It can be used to preserve teletext services.

1791376392634.webp

This is what a page looks like in an HEX editor:
1791376473859.webp

Loading the whole dump back to VMA Transport Stream Analyser:
1791376528489.webp

Rendering the page in RAW mode:
1791376543512.webp

Different backup (TVR):
1791376634762.webp

From the backup folder it is easy to find "weird" page numbers, which often belong to test pages:
1791376694552.webp

My VMA Playout Package, a software for automated generation of complete transport streams with multiple channels, includes teh VMA Teletext Generator software:

1791376908790.webp

This software can generate teletext pages automatically and dynamically for each channel.

It includes a teletext editor:

1791377026655.webp

Teletext is not dead and will continue to exist for time to come: almost all TV's that are in use or being sold include a teletext decoder.

Interestingly, teletext is quite an art form! It is not easy to design good looking pages with the limitations imposed by the system and, on the other hand, it is quite a feat how teletext was implemented in the first place!

Here is a nice Wikipedia page on the subject: Teletext - Wikipedia
 
I use SVT (Swedish public service), DR (Danish PS), NRK (Norwegian PS) and several German Teletext services every day.
Mostly via TV but also using an app for Teletext.

Nowadays many mostly younger people don't even know the excellent Teletext exist.
 
Nalleman said:
NRK (Norwegian PS)
Click to expand...
NRK ended its teletext service more than a year ago after serving 42 years from 1983. NRKs Tekst TV er lagt ned

Many commercian broadcasters also have shut down their teletext transmissions - MTV3 (with sister channels sharing same content), Nelonen - from Finland; so did other Scandinavian channels.
Even Estonian public bradcaster ETV had teletext very long time ago; it was closed just before analog switch off as old TTX equipment wasn't compatible to produce ttx-stream for digital transmitters and seemed easier to shut it down rather than renew the equipment. There was a long period when analog transmitters carried TTX, digital did not. Due to low transmission frequencies (analog ETV was mostly on channels R1, R2) there were lot of echoes in signal and that caused teletext to work faulty or not at all, proper roof aerial had to be enormous size to receive the good faultless signal. I remember that NICAM was more forgiving due the separate subcarrier (teletext is inside the blank signals) but still switched to mono if received with rabbit ears and person moved inside the room nearby.
Estonian TV3 had short-lived teletext, also the TV1 (extinct), both had it before digital era.
 
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Miika said:
NRK ended its teletext service more than a year ago after serving 42 years from 1983. NRKs Tekst TV er lagt ned

Many commercian broadcasters also have shut down their teletext transmissions - MTV3 (with sister channels sharing same content), Nelonen - from Finland; so did other Scandinavian channels.
Even Estonian public bradcaster ETV had teletext very long time ago; it was closed just before analog switch off as old TTX equipment wasn't compatible to produce ttx-stream for digital transmitters and seemed easier to shut it down rather than renew the equipment. There was a long period when analog transmitters carried TTX, digital did not. Due to low transmission frequencies (analog ETV was mostly on channels R1, R2) there were lot of echoes in signal and that caused teletext to work faulty or not at all, proper roof aerial had to be enormous size to receive the good faultless signal. I remember that NICAM was more forgiving due the separate subcarrier (teletext is inside the blank signals) but still switched to mono if received with rabbit ears and person moved inside the room nearby.
Estonian TV3 had short-lived teletext, also the TV1 (extinct), both had it before digital era.
Click to expand...
You are completly right of course!
I meant YLE and the Swedish part of their service (page 700).
Don't know why I wrote NRK - maybe I'm getting old and confused

Since I'm writing I can complete my list with RAI which actually has a pretty decent Teletext. Howerver I use it mainly for weather and program information,
 
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