Ceefax Turns 30

VirtualUK writes "Ceefax, the text information service from the BBC turns 30 today (just 3 days after myself)!! For those not lucky enough to have seen what Ceefax is about, it is text information pages sent in out-of-band data space of TV transmissions in Great Britain. What started off as a subtitling project evolved into a service still used by over 20 million viewers a week even in the face of the Internet revolution. It just goes to show that for a lot of people, the best source of sport results, last minute holiday bargains and horoscopes is still just a click away on their TV remote."

Information non-overload

One of the reasons Ceefax/Oracle was so popular was that it gave "just the facts, ma'am". It had to display on a 40x23 (ish) screen to work on the TV's of the time, and most pages used ZX81-style graphics (huge "pixels" :-) which reduced the content possibilities even more. Oh, it was free too :-)

Curiously, this reduced content actually worked in its' favour - about all that could be put on a single page was the raw information, without political or other bias; there just wasn't the space for opinion. Even when they used linked pages (page displays, waits 30 secs, new page displays, repeat and loop) the real-estate was severely limited since each page had to stand alone.

I clearly remember preferring the minimalist information from Ceefax over the long-form in a newspaper. If I wanted more about a story, I could listen to the news or buy a paper, but to get an overview it was ideal. A good example of 'less is more'. It helps that the Beeb has good journalists who can succinctly tell a story, of course...

Simon (on-topic, for once :-)

Re:Information non-overload

and most pages used ZX81-style graphics (huge "pixels" :-)

Telextext was exactly the same as the Acorn BBC microcomputer display mode 7.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext [wikipedia.org]

Re:Information non-overload

and most pages used ZX81-style graphics (huge "pixels" :-) which reduced the content possibilities even more. Oh, it was free too :-)

It always amazed me to see how much they could do with those glyph blocks [freeserve.co.uk]. Maps of the UK, Europe, the world for weather, traffic and airport news, even Snoopy. Undoubtably,ASCII art at it's finest. And they could manage to compress entire news stories into 400 characters or less, while still maintaining the reading level.

Re:Information non-overload

OK I'll bite.

It is true that we have to pay the Televison Licence every year and it's about £110-£120 (I have not checked). But look at all we get!

7 national, commercial free radio stations giving high quality music, spoken word, and live event output (like One Big Sunday if that's your bag or BBC Proms); 6 or so digital national commercial free TV channels with some pretty good original programming (and not so good too); loads of regional TV and Radio of similar quality; BBC Online [bbc.co.uk]; and, er, we gave the Yanks The Office, didn't we?

Sorry, I'm getting a lump in my throat here... Let me just step outside.

Re:Information non-overload

Wasn't trolling... just pointing out it isn't free.

I wasn't aware that the TV license was more than just a "license to watch tv". That fact that you get what you do (ad free) makes it seem like a rather good deal. *jealous*

Re:Information non-overload

And here's how the money goes

How your licence is spent
Each household's colour TV licence cost £9.67 every month in 2003/2004. On average each month, this was how the BBC spent your money:
Average monthly licence fee spend

BBC One £3.37
BBC Two £1.45
Digital television channels £0.98
Transmission and collection costs £0.98
BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 and Five Live £0.99
Digital radio stations £0.08
Nations & English Regions television £0.90
Local radio £0.61
bbc.co.uk £0.31

Re:teletext

It's called teletext here in the UK too. Ceefax is just the BBC's name for its teletext services.

All four terrestrial analogue broadcasters have teletext services and the hundreds of terrestrial/cable/satellite broadcasters have similar digital services too.

One interesting factoid about teletext is that, at one stage, over half the holidays in Britain were bought via teletext (ads on teletext, response by phone). Obviously, with the development of the Internet that's changed, but the teletext holiday market is still pretty big.

Re:teletext

Don't like to be picky but there are actually Five terrestial analogue broadcasters (although I personally can't get channel 5).

Don't like to be picky either (well, sometimes I do), but BBC1 and BBC2 are both BBC channels. That's one terrestrial broadcaster providing two channels. So the four terrestrial analogue broadcasters are the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and five.

Re:teletext

It's actually called teletext just about everywhere. CeeFax is simply an example of a teletext service. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], CeeFax (a.k.a. Teledata) was first, and was followed closely by ORACLE. Other services came later.

Personally, I find this story very interesting. I had heard about teletext from one of those old Usborne books as a kid, but I'd never actually SEEN it. I'd always assumed that it was one of those little known services that really didn't go anywhere. It seems I was wrong. :-)

Re:teletext

It's called teletext in the UK as well. It's just the BBC service that's called Ceefax (although the BBC teletext project was called Ceefax, and the ITV one was called Oracle, which both led to the names of the services). Oracle lost it's franchise in 1993, so Ceefax is the oldest teletext service in the UK, and probably the world. Oracle

To confuse things the company who have the rights to broadcast teletext on ITV, Channel 4 and Five (the rights were sold separately from the rights for general TV broadcasting on the frequencies) are now held by a company called Teletext Ltd, or just Teletext for short.

Pretty cool stuff

That's pretty cool! Here in the U.S., we had to pay per minute for contemporary services on Compuserve. With prices as high as $0.20 per minute, it's no wonder that Compuserve was primarily reserved for businesses! But to have hundreds of pages of text information pushed to your television set at no (excluding television tax) cost? That's amazing!

Of course, the proliferation of U.S. BBSes started in the mid to late 80's and gained momentum right up until the Internet became popular in the mid-90's. Which makes me wonder. Is there a telnet machine somewhere where we can access the CeeFax info? It would be interesting to see what they're pushing over the airwaves.

Ah memories. Sometimes I wonder if the tech of the 80's wasn't cooler than the tech we have today. Sure, we have Gooey interfaces and full color graphics, but what's that compared to the thrill of interfacing systems over a modem, cursing at natural language interfaces, designing BBS screens in TheDraw, and wowing at the amount of info that's (unknown to the general populace) being pushed over massive research networks and dial-up nodes? (3 days for an email? That's speedy, man!) Or maybe I'm just nostalgic. :-)

Re:Pretty cool stuff

That's pretty cool! Here in the U.S., we had to pay per minute for contemporary services on Compuserve. With prices as high as $0.20 per minute, it's no wonder that Compu$erve was primarily reserved for businesses! But to have hundreds of pages of text information pushed to your television set at no (excluding television tax) cost? That's amazing!

You see, public entreprises (that belong to the State) aren't always bad... Public service is exactly what it says: service for the public, and not a sinister plot by the Government to enslave the population, as you yankees seem to be happy to believe so easily...

And where is Compu$erve, nowadays????

Re:Pretty cool stuff

Yeah the idea is that you consent to the majority opinion about what services are necessary. If you persuade enough other people to agree with you, then things change accordingly. It's called democracy - one of those things you're supposed to have learnt while growing up.

Re:Pretty cool stuff

To be fair, not even half of "us yankees" believe that public service funding is a sinister idea. While our conservatives tend to be more so than their counterparts in Great Britain and elsewhere, we also have our share of moderates and liberals who believe in the value of governmental spending for the public good, to varying extents.

Well, make sure they go vote in 6 weeks, then.

Information

not only wants to be free but aparently broadcasted in as many forms as possible

Yes, and cable companies -still- don't show it

Slashdot title length made me tell a slight falshood there - a number of franchise areas can receive this. But a large majority can't get hold of it, both Telewest and NTL areas (major UK cable suppliers).

And yes, I'm in an NTL area that can't get it. And yes, I'm terribly annoyed - I used to use the subtitling quite often, even though I'm not deaf. Just wanted the volume off to listen to music, for instance, or needed to be quiet for some other reason.

NTL [ntl.com], please sort out the broadcasting of teletext as you claimed you weere going to do more than three years ago.

Cheers,
Ian

Ceefax is cool but dated....

...and its days are numbered. The UK government's deadling for ceasing analogue transmissions is 2012, at which point we'll all have to use the richer digital content. The reason it's been so successful for so long is similar to fax's longevity: it just works, and everyone is familiar with it.

Re:Teletext never really popular in the USA....

All of that is true, however it's largely unrelated - the rise of the public internet happened largely in the last decade, not 30 years ago.

DecimalHexi

One "cool" thing about the teletext system was the little known fact that the page numbers are actually in HEX.

The "public" pages only use hex numbers that consist only of numeric characters, but I once had a TV that allowed you to enter the hex numbers aswell, and you could find all sorts of cool stuff, including some kind of system to automatically set video-recorders etc.

Alevt

Alevt [goron.de] is the open source teletext player.

It runs all the time on one of my desktops - IMHO it is the very best source of concise, up-to-date information.

Here are some dumps of the current BBC front pages, courtesy of alevtd and w3m (some stuff snipped to avoid slashdot "junk" lameness filter).

101.00 CEEFAX 2 101 Thu 23 Sep 14:46/55
HOSTAGE'S RELEASE 'SABOTAGED BY US' 104
Straw rules out Bigley negotiations 105

BARRACKS Fresh abuses claims probed 113

LIB DEM We're on the move Kennedy 115

AIR BA taking on 200 Heathrow staff 110

FBI Deported Cat Stevens back in UK 108

SOCCER Keane denies assault charges 122

HAITI Toll from flooding tops 1,000 114

TRIBUTES Ceefax celebrates 30 years 111

CATCH UP WITH YORKS & LINCS NEWS 160

News index Top story TV/Radio Main menu

<< < o > >>
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 about
Jump to page [ ] [ok]

<hr>
104.00 CEEFAX 2 104 Thu 23 Sep 14:48/20
UK hostage's release 'sabotaged'
The brother of British hostage Kenneth
Bigley says the US has "sabotaged" his
brother's release by refusing to free a
detained woman scientist in Iraq.

Paul Bigley told the BBC there had been
"a shadow of light" when Iraqi
ministers said the woman would go free.

But the US ruled out freeing the woman
one of two held in Iraq - saying it
would not give in to the kidnappers.

Kenneth Bigley was seen in a video
appealing to UK Prime Minister Tony
Blair to help save his life.

Home news digest 141 World digest 142
News Index 102 Flash 150 Regional 160
Next News News Indx Headlines Main Menu

<< < o > >>
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 about
Jump to page [ ] [ok]

TeleTekst here in the Netherlands

Its called Teletekst here in the Netherlands and is still used quite a lot. The public broadcasting corporation even has a web gateway. Check it out here for those of you unfamiliar with the concept of teletekst:

http://teletekst.nos.nl/ [teletekst.nos.nl]

So you basically see all the area in black on your TV screen... use your remote to search for the pages.

I guess they have this service on the web because a lot of people, like another poster said, like the sparse/terse way of information presentation. I frequently visit the weather (page 702) and news page (page 101) for a quick overview. Very useful.

Also used for TV program listings and stuff like that (page 201 usually).

Digitiser

anyone remember the computer game page on channel 4 teletext called digitiser? That was some weird stuff..

http://www.lynn3686.freeserve.co.uk/digitiser.html [freeserve.co.uk]
http://www.mrbiffo.com/biffodigitiser.htm [mrbiffo.com]

'The Man' and his column and all that 'press reveal' only to uncover a weird swan or something with flashing red eyes.

I always wondered who was paying the wages of those crazy guys

Pictures of CEEFAX pages

For anyone interested there are so great photos of early Ceefax and Oracle pages as well some personal histories here [mb21.co.uk] and here [freeserve.co.uk]

I still use Ceefax a lot, especially as a news source and for sports scores.

Re:Article error

Stop nit picking.

You must be new here.

And long may it continue

Ahhh... good old MODE 7, aka Teletext. :-)

One of the things I really miss about TV since moving to the USA is the various Teletext services. I've never understood why this system didn't catch on outside of Europe (maybe there's a technical reason, I dunno).

Long before I had internet, I could spend literally hours reading Teletext pages and playing the really basic, but still entertaining games (remember Bamboozle?). We even had a Teletext reader on the old BBC Micros at my school, about 10 years before they got the JANET linkup :)

The closest the US has is the information pages that DirecTV and some cable providers have. However, they're nowhere near as comprehensive.

Great for TV listings

It's great for TV listings too... Long before anyone had satellite or digital cable, one could quickly load up a list of programming for the week, with info pages for all the major shows.

Teletext to HTTP gateways?

Are there any Teletext to HTTP gateways? It would seem a natural way to widen the exposure of the information.

Skinternet

I've spent many a happy hour browsing Ceefax, and this website [mb21.co.uk] about how it all fits together. As a youth it takes a lot of effort to work out how Ceefax sends the page you ask for, but there's no two-way communication -- Page Frame Relay comes to the rescue.

Bit of trivia -- Ceefax is ocasionally known as in the UK as the Skinternet because of the relative cheapness of getting on to Ceefax as opposed to the internet.
[ Skint + Internet ]

Good human interface design

I think a large part of what makes Ceefax/Teletext so successful and why I still love it even with digital interactive stuff, internet etc is that it's just so nice to use.

It's consistent - okay, sometimes consistently blocky with consistantly slow waits for the carousel, but it's just darn consistent dammit! Same "fonts", same styles, Page 100 is always the start, it always has the same features (hold/reveal/mix etc) from one TV to the next etc.

The information you're most likely to want is shown immediately on page 100.

For novice users there are helpful indexes and usually coloured hotkeys that take you to well chosen related pages.

For more advanced users you can enter a page number directly and get to the information you want quicker.

It's highly accessible - huge, clear text on a plain black background that practically anyone can read even if they're hard of sight etc.

With such a low resolution you only get the information you want and can easily assimilate at one time instead of a huge screenful of ads and other garbage to wade through.

It's fairly quick (as long as you aren't after page 101 when the carousel has just gone past 102)

It's remarkably easy to use. My granny uses it.

Now, is it me or did the BBC do their theory research wonderfully (as they always seem to do, who says the license is a waste of money when so many slashdot articles originate from them) and have followed HCI principles really rather nicely. This is what happens when you develop a system properly - 30 years later, people are still using it and still love it!