RIP Ceefax

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It got destroyed by the Internet, and this thread would be best suited to the Opinions & Current Events section.
 
It got destroyed by the Internet, and this thread would be best suited to the Opinions & Current Events section.

Since I'm unsure where to put this (I nearly attempted to put this in Movies and TV section), I decided to put it here. But you're proably right. :indiff:
 
It got destroyed by the Internet, and this thread would be best suited to the Opinions & Current Events section.

No. It got destroyed once they turned the Analogue signal off and not before.

Even with Broadband, it was still much easier and quicker to press Text on your remote than it was to power up a PC.
 
I love Ceefax.

It got me through some tough nights. Analogue TV is no more...
 
CEEFAX was awesome....

102 - news
302 - footy news/results
338 - footy transfer news
360 - motorsport news

600 - tv guide

Super easy, superquick, super reliable and FREE...

R.I.P ceefax

You will be forever missed - especially Saturday afternoons when checking my footy team's afternoon progress :(
 
superquick

Ummmm...not quite. It was awfully slow. I'll be glad to see the back of it, my dad was obsessed with using it for news despite it taking about 2 hours to update news stories. He even used it with his laptop open in front of him but then my parents still buy a TV guide so they're not exactly the most tech savvy people!

Don't get me started on trying to train my grandparents to press 'subtitles' instead of 888. It's one button instead of 4, how is that more difficult?!
 
CEEFAX was awesome....

102 - news
302 - footy news/results
338 - footy transfer news
360 - motorsport news

600 - tv guide

Super easy, superquick, super reliable and FREE...

R.I.P ceefax

You will be forever missed - especially Saturday afternoons when checking my footy team's afternoon progress :(
All of that. IIRC 321 was the Scottish footie results.

606 showed you what was on now and next on the 5 channels, whilst allowing you to still watch the program you were on.

Sitting up late at night watching and listening to "pages from ceefax."



Those were the days.
 
So this is a Brit-only thing? I've never heard of Ceefax.

No, Ceefax, austext are both one and the same.

It is called Teletext it is like a newspaper that is displayed on the TV.

It never was accepted in North America.

But it was a way to transmit basic ASCII text and images.

It was good for showing news, finance, sports, weather, TV guides, jokes, and closed captions for TV shows.

This was broadcast on a particular channel along with standard TV.

Eg.

CBC has the rights to broadcast and you just go to that channel and then press the Teletext button on your remote to bring up the service.

Since it was based off 1970s tech which is old by these days.
It was too costly too update the system for digital TVs and since most people have broadband it is easier for someone to look up the weather on there PC/Laptop or smartphone.

Here in Australia the only part of teletext that still lives on is the closed captioning service.

This was the main page of Austext which you saw when you wanted to use the service.
ImageResizer.ashx


This is what teletext art looked like(I am still quite fond of it).
teletext.jpg

teletext.jpg

teletext-flying-balloons.png


Look at it as a hybird of ASCII(they even used symbols) and pixel art.

More info can be found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext
 
Ceefax used to be the internet before the real one was invented, or widely used. It was a pretty nifty idea at the time. In the days before 24hr news channels, it was the only way to access upto the minute headlines and sports results etc.

I used to 'watch' Le Mans on it in the days when it wasn't televised.
 
Ceefax used to be my number one place for sports news.

Used to be. Oh, how times change! Kids these days. They don't know what it was like...

Says the 21 year old.
 
I think my dad still used Ceefax to view winning lottery numbers until last year, and that's all he ever used it for.

I never actually used it though, but I've had it on in the background occasionally in the early hours when I'm online. It put the lounge music in GT5 to shame. Still, it's a somewhat sad moment to know that it's gone for good now.

More info on various Teletext services here: http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/
 
CEEFAX was awesome....

102 - news
302 - footy news/results
338 - footy transfer news
360 - motorsport news

600 - tv guide

Super easy, superquick, super reliable and FREE...

R.I.P ceefax

You will be forever missed - especially Saturday afternoons when checking my footy team's afternoon progress :(

Dont forget
888 - Subtitles.
Most used page in our house.
I would have prefered it if there was a digital versionused by the BBC called Ceefax and with the same layout.
 
What you have to understand is that the genius of Ceefax was that they figured out how to put the whole of the BBC News website into the data stream of the TV signal, without any visual artefacts, in nineteen seventy four!

Obviously, the growth of the internet has made it an irrelevance, but at the time, it was insanely clever.
 
German Teletext is still pretty common and many people use it, even on digital. Haven't really used it myself for a while, but I couldn't imagine a TV without it.
 
In Finland we can't watch YLE Teletext via televisions anymore due to digital switchover (I could be wrong about that though), but we can still watch it via internet and it's updating its content as usual.
 
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Ceefax would like to thank everyone for their support through-out their thirty year lif3x j g3.
 
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