Be Excellent To Each Other

It only just dawned on me today that we're going to lose Teletext as a whole in January. And possibly Ceefax too.


I always grew up enjoying playing Bamboozle round my nan's (because she had a fasttext TV and we didn't back then), catching up on all things musical in Planet Sound and inspecting their end-of-year charts, laughing merrily at Digitiser's unique wit and games knowledge, and whiling away a few minutes catching up on Turner The Worm and Glug The Slug's latest adventure.


I guess it's easy to say Teh Internets killed it off over the years, but it still feels cruel to be obliterating it somehow. I wish I still had plenty of memories of the Oracle years.


Any fond memories?

Digitiser and Planet Sound for me (though I still read Planet Sound every morning to this day on the website anyway!)

I used to read Digitiser a lot but rarely found it funny. Too many silly 'press reveal' pictures getting in the way. I seem to be in the minority on this one though.

We don't have analogue anymore so won't miss teletext.

I used to have a teletext adaptor for my CPC. You plugged it into the composite output of the VCR and it would decode the teletext. You could even download software although it was always shit type-in games and rarely CPC stuff.

I did download a shit racing game though. Took forever. Thinking about it I probably hadn't even heard the term "download" at the time. This must have been about 1987!

I have never looked at a page of teletext in my life.

My Dad still checks the football scores using teletext. I doubt he'll ever use the internet in his life.

It reminds me of the story Danny Baker told where he took the UK Conker champion to New York. Over 70 years of age he had never been outside of Rutland in his entire life save for the war and a visit to London the previous week for another TV appearance with Danny,

At the end of the shoot Danny found the man visibly upset sitting alone. He asked what the problem was. The old gent replied that New York was so wonderful, he had seen so much and he was pondering what he had really done with his life.

So Craster, this is for you:

606 for now and next on telly when I forget to buy Times or Guardian on a Saturday. Other than that, no, never look at it. It will not be missed.

I used to check now and next before I got sky but I think it is pretty much obsolete now. Also used to use the subtitles because my mum is a bit deaf but refused to go get hearing aids for ages because she thought she was too young.

I do not have sky or cable, and our area will not get freeview for another year or so. On the other hand, we have a cafe that has good salad. Truly, I live in a centre of cultural excellence.

Ah, the well known and highly regarded salad index. Well played sir, well played.

I'm surprised you still aren't on 405 line. Do you have colour?

When I was small some places still didn't have colour. We had a big TV at school that was black and white.

Well, given how rare an enjoyable salad is, it's worth a billion Sky Plusses.

Fuck. Who am I trying to kid? I want MOAR CHANNELS. Sob.

With both my parents being deaf, I got into the habit of reading the subtitles on pretty much everything. It was handy for Top of the Pops at least if you wanted to know the words to something.

I can remember when we owned (rather than rented) a TV for the first time. Also, when we got our Granada top loading video. Some time later we got teletext. I'm fairly sure that my memory of my dad not watching TV that night, only reading text, is a true one.

I was going to laugh at you and call you old then. But I think you're younger than me.

Ha yes, we used to love the subtitles for that. i remember having to get up to change channels and I remember getting the first hi-fi with a CD and cassette player built in, but I'm just a young 'un

We had a Ferguson Videostar with a remote control on a cable that we never bothered with.

I certainly look it.

My employer writes interface software to holiday booking systems run over the Prestel protocol, which is Teletext, but two-way. You'll often see these terminals in travel agents (they look exactly like Teletext, blocky text-based graphics and lurid colours). For example, if you go on ThomasCook.com and book a Cosmos holiday, the booking will pass from our system into Cosmos's over this interface.

It's the things I've seen, man.

I have a very vague memory from school of tinkering with Prestel but I can't remember what we did or why. Better that arsing around with that Logo Turtle stuff though. Even better was when all the BBCs were replaced with Archimedeseseses so we could play Zarch.

There were also ultrasonic controllers, which would probably cause your dog to explode or something.

In fact I remember YS reviewing some ultrasonic cordless joysticks in 1992/93. Strangely they never took off, probably due to household pets exploding.

There were also ultrasonic controllers, which would probably cause your dog to explode or something.[/quote]Why would it be ultrasonic if it's on a cable?

Why would it be ultrasonic if it's on a cable?[/quote]

The key word there was "also".

Would be great if it happened just as you pulled off a headshot though.

I'm not reading 15 words to be proven wrong.

Did you go back and count the words? If so, screw the rules, I'm turning up at Grim...s with you as my nerd item.

Christ, trust you lot to turn a thread about Teletext into a nerdfest.

Hang on...

Of course I did. Why did you even ask?

I would have been disappointed otherwise

I miss teletext, the digital equivalent is crap and slow.

What, the internet?

POTMFW

It's like a bulletin board. You need the correct expansion for your C64 through.



Yes, that is really Google on a C64.

Where are the pictures?

Why the internet won:

Teletext was always crap. I remember getting very excited when we first got a TV capable of receiving it. The excitement quickly faded away after twenty minutes of watching a small three digit number count up in the corner of the TV screen.

Also:

I defy anyone to come up with a better first line to an anecdote than that.

My preferences were, Digitiser (loved Mr Biffos humour) then Gamecentral when I'm home from work of an evening. Also watched planet sound, for music stuff, but as far as other stuff thats it.

I remember getting teletext at the same time as the big televised chess game on channel 4. I remember checking the game on it lots.

I read Digitiser religiously every day (after finding it on a hotel room TV while bored during a visit to the UK) as well as Angst (Dear Nick, I haven't washed my cock for two weeks and now it smells, is this normal?).

Bamboozle was crap - if you got it wrong you'd go back several questions and have to answer those again as well. And Digitiser's over-reliance on Reveal-me-dos was annoying, it took me forever to work out how to do that on our TV.

I also went to the CBBC page trying to find blocky pix of Kirsten O'Brien (aka blondie bird with the wonky teeth) but instead found an awesome picture of Otis the Aardvark.

Does anyone remember an ANIMATED teletext? My grandmother had it during one visit and never again, the same appalling blocky look but full of brilliant, funny animated adverts.

Don't be shy DoccyGee. In remembrance of times past we should shed a little tear for the FlameWars on a.d
Particularly the one that resulted in you becoming the infamous Computer Boy on Digitiser after your run in with Paul Rose.

You had to love the fun of booking a holiday from teletext. Page after Page of adverts which all looked the same, with prices which weren't available when you called. The holiday you got was also completely random. You could pay £200 one and end up in the centre of resort in a five star hotel, or get a grot 3 miles from the sea, all at the whim of what envelope the rep gave you when you arrived at the airport.

Ah yes. Teletext Holidays was actually a Thomas Cook brand, but the bottom-feeder one. And to top that off, they allowed third parties to advertise directly on the service -- so they were the really crappy suppliers.

So you had holidays that excluded fuel tax and transfers and supplement charges and whatnot which, when added up, doubled the base cost of the holiday. (Holiday firms aren't allowed to do this any more). And, a really sweet trick, they would advertise a "per person" price that assumed maximum occupancy -- so, three people in a twin room (with a camp bed). So if you travelled as a couple that £200pp became £300pp.

That's in no way specific to Teletext, who were just a sales channel for the tour operators (admittedly the worst of the tour ops). Never buy allocated on arrival holidays.

Strangely, the part of my job that makes me feel most powerful is having the ability to directly edit on-air Ceefax. Not that I use that power often, mind.

@Gaywood

Yeah, I know that wasn't specfically teletext. I was just reminiscign generally at that point about the days when I was poor and had little option, and when the internet didnt function sufficiently for you to create your own holiday.

Cor!

...and then have no holiday and no compensation when your airline goes bust, or even better, get stranded in the forrins when your airline goes bust while you are away.

Prove it, go on.