The end of Ceefax.

[Morningside]

I love(d) Teletext/Ceefax/Oracle.
Way, way back in the 1970s there was a school visit to the local Butlins holiday camp and the local TV company Pye was demonstrating their latest products. Teletext being one of them.
I was blown away! I mean, how on earth did it know what buttons I was pressing and what page I wanted? WOW!
Not realising of course that it just scrolled through all 999 pages and lots of magazines.

The first company I worked for did a Prestel"" mod for the unit Tantel.

Then in the late 1980s I did a teletext board for an Egypt TV decoder.

I also have a teletext tester in the shed. Exactly the same as this one with books and everything. Totally useless now so I suppose I will keep it as an historic oddity



The best button? "REVEAL".

"" (A sort-of Teletext over the phone)

[Eric Mc]

italianjob1275 said:

Did any one used to do the Bamboozle quiz on channel 4 ceefax?

That was awesome.

Yes 360 for motorsport. Even covered local club events

Channel 4 wasn't "Ceefax".

[italianjob1275]

Eric Mc said:

Channel 4 wasn't "Ceefax".

Or whatever their equivalent was then

[superlightr]

I remember my my parents advertising on cefax et el just so we could then put in paper ads - 'as seen on tv' ! haha makes me smile and cringe now. at the time it was like wow theres out name etc.

has had its day if it even had one then.

[g3org3y]

Negative Creep said:

Anyone else used to read Digitiser?

Yes!

italianjob1275 said:

Did any one used to do the Bamboozle quiz on channel 4 ceefax?

And yes!

It was a more simple time back in the day!

[bad company]

We booked our 1st trip to New York on teletext. I had no idea it was still going.

[tonyvid]

Morningside said:

I love(d) Teletext/Ceefax/Oracle.
I also have a teletext tester in the shed. Exactly the same as this one with books and everything. Totally useless now so I suppose I will keep it as an historic oddity

Geeky cool

[HOGEPH]

In the early 90's I'd spend ages trawling through the Worldwide Travel teletext pages to get a holiday in Florida as often as I could afford it. Had some real bargains on there. I can recall seeing fly-drives for £99!

[Mastiff]

It was infuriating though! In from the club "unable to sleep" and it was the only thing on, and the pages just TOOK TOO LONG to change!

It won quite a few awards I seem to remember - one for being able to condense any news item into just 4 paragraphs.

[CDP]

Morningside said:

I love(d) Teletext/Ceefax/Oracle.
Way, way back in the 1970s there was a school visit to the local Butlins holiday camp and the local TV company Pye was demonstrating their latest products. Teletext being one of them.
I was blown away! I mean, how on earth did it know what buttons I was pressing and what page I wanted? WOW!
Not realising of course that it just scrolled through all 999 pages and lots of magazines.

The first company I worked for did a Prestel"" mod for the unit Tantel.

Then in the late 1980s I did a teletext board for an Egypt TV decoder.

I also have a teletext tester in the shed. Exactly the same as this one with books and everything. Totally useless now so I suppose I will keep it as an historic oddity



The best button? "REVEAL".

"" (A sort-of Teletext over the phone)

There's one of the site controllers for the first generation of digital TV in my attic. It's about 14 years old...

[TheSnitch]

italianjob1275 said:

Did any one used to do the Bamboozle quiz on channel 4 ceefax?

That was awesome.

Yes 360 for motorsport. Even covered local club events

Bamboozle!!! I hadn't mourned the demise of ceefax at all into you reminded me of that. I loved Bamboozle. Except for the glitches where you got a question right and it insisted you got it wrong, sending you back about six questions. After trying each option, which were all apparently wrong, you would return to your first choice, at which point it would decide the answer was now correct after all, and advance you to the next question, leaving you shouting ''..but I picked option A in the first place, you stupid fking machine!!!!''

No? Just me then....

[Morningside]

CDP said:

Morningside said:

I love(d) Teletext/Ceefax/Oracle.
Way, way back in the 1970s there was a school visit to the local Butlins holiday camp and the local TV company Pye was demonstrating their latest products. Teletext being one of them.
I was blown away! I mean, how on earth did it know what buttons I was pressing and what page I wanted? WOW!
Not realising of course that it just scrolled through all 999 pages and lots of magazines.

The first company I worked for did a Prestel"" mod for the unit Tantel.

Then in the late 1980s I did a teletext board for an Egypt TV decoder.

I also have a teletext tester in the shed. Exactly the same as this one with books and everything. Totally useless now so I suppose I will keep it as an historic oddity



The best button? "REVEAL".

"" (A sort-of Teletext over the phone)

There's one of the site controllers for the first generation of digital TV in my attic. It's about 14 years old...

Photo please. Who made it?

[CDP]

Morningside said:

CDP said:

Morningside said:

I love(d) Teletext/Ceefax/Oracle.
Way, way back in the 1970s there was a school visit to the local Butlins holiday camp and the local TV company Pye was demonstrating their latest products. Teletext being one of them.
I was blown away! I mean, how on earth did it know what buttons I was pressing and what page I wanted? WOW!
Not realising of course that it just scrolled through all 999 pages and lots of magazines.

The first company I worked for did a Prestel"" mod for the unit Tantel.

Then in the late 1980s I did a teletext board for an Egypt TV decoder.

I also have a teletext tester in the shed. Exactly the same as this one with books and everything. Totally useless now so I suppose I will keep it as an historic oddity



The best button? "REVEAL".

"" (A sort-of Teletext over the phone)

There's one of the site controllers for the first generation of digital TV in my attic. It's about 14 years old...

Photo please. Who made it?

I'm not crawling round the attic right now for a picture but the hardware for the unit was made by Arcom Control Systems in Cambridge and I wrote the software for it while working for dB Broadcast in Ely to a spec written by a genius at Crown Castle. Great fun as nobody had done any of this before Based on a 386ex processor with an RTOS on 512K of RAM and 512K of flash memory.

[Hooli]

TheSnitch said:

italianjob1275 said:

Did any one used to do the Bamboozle quiz on channel 4 ceefax?

That was awesome.

Yes 360 for motorsport. Even covered local club events

Bamboozle!!! I hadn't mourned the demise of ceefax at all into you reminded me of that. I loved Bamboozle. Except for the glitches where you got a question right and it insisted you got it wrong, sending you back about six questions. After trying each option, which were all apparently wrong, you would return to your first choice, at which point it would decide the answer was now correct after all, and advance you to the next question, leaving you shouting ''..but I picked option A in the first place, you stupid fking machine!!!!''

No? Just me then....

rings a bell.

[CDP]

Morningside said:

Photo please. Who made it?

I see you're in the Cambridge area too. One of the Pye TV clan?

[Halb]

HOGEPH said:

In the early 90's I'd spend ages trawling through the Worldwide Travel teletext pages to get a holiday in Florida as often as I could afford it. Had some real bargains on there. I can recall seeing fly-drives for £99!

I flew to Florida for 99 back in the 90s, the exchnage was 2:1 as well, it was ace!



Big fan of bamboozle here too, loved that game.

[Halb]

HOGEPH said:

In the early 90's I'd spend ages trawling through the Worldwide Travel teletext pages to get a holiday in Florida as often as I could afford it. Had some real bargains on there. I can recall seeing fly-drives for £99!

I flew to Florida for 99 back in the 90s, the exchange was 2:1 as well, it was ace!



Big fan of bamboozle here too, loved that game.

[Morningside]

CDP said:

Morningside said:

Photo please. Who made it?

I see you're in the Cambridge area too. One of the Pye TV clan?

Cambridge? Nope, I am in Suffolk. Although my father was on the Lowestoft Pye radio development in the 1950s/60s.

Reason why I asked about it is that a friend of mine worked in the digital TV field and I know this sort of thing interests him.

[madala]

....never ever used it.....