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Teletext

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I have memories from around 1980 of visiting some friends of my parents who had a television with teletext. The television had a remote control and when you pressed a certain button the picture vanished and was replaced by a screen filled with text. Entering in a number using the remote control would bring up another page of text about something else. There were pages for all sorts of things ranging from weather reports to airline flights to international news. It was amazing. I would spend hours looking at the pages of Ceefax and Oracle.

Televisions with teletext were an expensive luxury in 1980. My family had to make do with a Sony portable with knobs and buttons on the front panel and no remote control. Teletext was an option on many early 80's televisions that added around ?100 to the price. Only in the late 80's were teletext decoders included as standard in most televisions.

Not many people know this but teletext will die when analogue broadcasts are switched off.

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Do You Remember Teletext?

Do You Remember Teletext?

  • McG
    on
    Anyone remember Park Avenue on Oracle?
  • Anonymous user
    on
    I remember a friend showing me Ceefax (she wasn't allowed to watch ITV)and I was totally amazed. I don't think we even had a remote control in our house at that point so Ceefax blew my mind. I'd compare the experience to the first time I used the internet at the beginning of the nineties. Ceefax/Teletext really did seem impressive back then. Who would have dared to imagine the wonders of the 'red button' we have now?
  • Anonymous user
    on
    Teletext has it's own special memory for me, my dad was a TV engineer in the 80's for Radio Rentals (remember them?) and although I wasn't around for it coming out (ceefax started 1974) I do remember going into the workshop where my dad worked (he was the boss) at the weekends and seeing rows of brand new sets on the workbenches and fiddling with the teletext on them! My dad even made a hybrid decoder board for teletext and retrofitted it into an old 70's set, it worked perfect, with it's ultrasonic remote!
  • Anonymous user
    on
    I've seen an old commercial on the TV Ark website for Teletext, and the man who was demonstrating it would just press the number, and the chosen page would appear instantly! The reality was so much different - I remember the first Teletext set I had (this was in 1984, and was a good few years after that commercial was made), and I'd sometimes be sitting there for well over half a minute waiting for my selected page to show itself (reminds me of dial-up)!
  • Anonymous user
    on
    Remote control telly! No wonder today's kids are so unhealthy. I spent my entire youth yo-yoing between the settee and the telly changing the channels for myself and everyone else in the house. Great exercise!
  • Anonymous user
    on
    They'll come up with something to replace Teletext when analogue tv is phased out - mind you, VCRs and tapes had lots going for them that DVDs lack. "Technology" me eye....
  • Anonymous user
    on
    bamboozle was great!! i remember playing that- pressing the red button and being digitally interactive just isn't quite the same is it?!
  • Anonymous user
    on
    Bah humbug to that!!! I love my text!!! I too have very fond memories of the early days when only my Aunt was lucky enough to have a text TV. I need my Bamboozle, news, world weather, etc! T'internet just ain't the same somwhow!
  • Anonymous user
    on
    WHAAAT?!? Teletext will die?!? How could this happen? Where will i read my daily horoscope and play bamboozle?! Technology has gone too far this time. NOT HAPPY!

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