The Legacy Of CEEFAX | A Ground-Breaking Service

[@joannegreenway872]

I remember playing a quiz called bamboozle on ceefax using the colour buttons on your remote

[@AZ14ify]

I used to love playing bamboozle 😊

[@RemnantCult]

If there's one thing I got to say as someone who is west of the Atlantic in America: the folks in the UK seemed to really embrace the computer age and predict its importance in our lives. Things like the BBC encouraging computer education for the masses and the introduction of Ceefax demonstrates this commitment to making sure everyone is not only equipped for the future, but already at the cutting edge of information technology. That's what seriously strikes me. Until the early 2000s, a majority of people were still getting their latest info from newspapers. I love newspapers and print media, but this just illustrates how far ahead ceefax and teletext was. We never embraced it for some reason.

[@abzhuofficial]

One thing I also liked about Ceefax/Teletext is how its news articles that are posted on there are easy to read by 2024 standards, in the age of TikTok/Douyin, KZbin, and "fast food"-like media

[@GeoNeilUK]

One thing that also irritated me about TV programmes that featured computer education was they would always put gaming. This was when the UK had a fairly burgeoning computer and video games industry. Ocean could have been Ubisoft. What also helped with Teletext in the UK compared to the US is that Ceefax was provided free of charge by the BBC, just as Oracle and 4-Tel were also provided free of charge and the hardware to access Teletext ended up incorporated into the TVs themselves. By the 1990s, it was pretty much impossible to get a TV that wasn't Teletext enabled. From what I understand, in the USA, Teletext was never incorporated into American sets, meaning it needed an extra set top box and was a subscription service.

[@UnbelievableEricthegiraffe]

On certain pages, you could read the Austrian state broadcaster ORF Equivalent of Ceefax, I didn't imagine that dud I ,??.

[@ratcityworld]

This might sound weird but when I was a kid I used to wake up sometimes in the early hours of the morning just to watch ceefax. I don’t really know how to explain it but there was something about it I found so mesmerising, the retro looking graphics, the relaxing smooth music, plus the fact it was the middle of the night and I should have been asleep. There was something so satisfying but also slightly eerie about it. I got such a weird unexplainable feeling when the channel would shut down for the night and the ceefax opening screen would come up and my room would be blue from the light of the screen. I’m glad I got to experience it as a kid and since 2012, when I would have been 14, I’ve missed it

[@matthewlawrenson3628]

The school I attended back in 1988 had an in-house Teletext system. Everyone who did IT was taught to make pages for it. I can still make them today. Who says the tech education of 36 years ago is useless and obsolete?

[@Volvoman90]

Well, seen as though Ceefax was retired in 2012, the knowledge and skills required to create Ceefax pages is indeed now useless and obsolete. :D

[@reddwarfer999]

@@Volvoman90 Although not the same thing, I would imagine it would take similar skills to create a Ceefax page as to a web page.

[@David-xu3yk]

We booked a holiday from the ceefax page once! There were last minute holidays being updated so we picked one at 9pm at night, phoned the number and were off to get the plane to Greece by 1am! One of the best random holidays I've ever had.

[@freddienz]

Very Good. I was working for Television New Zealand when the service started here. Learned a lot about the engineering inside it. The unit was based in my city, Christchurch. Cheers.

[@annemariestones3984]

I loved playing Bambozzle on the channel 4 version! My mum would not learn how to use the Internet, so used to read the news from the ITV version until she died in 2018. (I believe that was running until 2019)..

[@centrevezgaming4862]

Yes I also had hours of fun playing it

[@plan7a]

There was a Bamboozle app for a while, on the (Apple) App Store, it wasn't too bad; it's no longer available though.

[@itskdog]

I forgot that there used to be replacements for Teletext on digital TV, as well. These days you don't hear about the red button as much except to point to iPlayer, and Sky have removed the Text button from their remotes

[@Volvoman90]

I remember the super hard sports Bamboozle with the red hat dude Brian; and the Saturday morning "Buster" with easy questions for kids!

[@reddwarfer999]

Yes, that brings back some memories! The host was called Bamber Boozler, an obvious nod to Bamber Gascoigne.

[@005AGIMA]

I want it back. But what I really want are those times. Summer Holiday. Ceefax / Teletext pages for teens. Brian Adams still at number 1 in the charts. Teletext posting my comment "George is a Hippo, Bungle is a Bear, but does anyone know what Zippy is?" after I rang up the telephone number. What a time.

[@thomasmartin7852]

I always remember when I was younger constantly looking at Ceefax for the football fixtures coming up for the next week. I still miss it now.

[@furonguy42]

As a kid, I did have quite the fascination with Ceefax. I just found it immensely cool that the TV could produce these whole extra pages of information over the regular four channels we had, and that although it often looked static, was up to date to the minute! Even as the internet became more readily available to me, Ceefax remained intriguing specifically because it was on the television and used the same broadcast frequencies instead of internet technology. Although Ceefax itself may be gone, I appreciate that even today, the Closed Captions on BBC iPlayer still use that colourful Ceefax aesthetic.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I never noticed it was a Ceefax aesthetic. Probably because many channels on Freeview, Channel 4 for instance, used the same colour-coded subtitles. But of course they were all just legacies of the original Teletext's 888 subtitles page! Which as you say, had exactly those colours.

[@GeoNeilUK]

Also, you could argue that not only did the internet kill off Ceefax, but also Ceefax’s replacement, the Red Button. Having said that, it would have been nice if they’d found a way to keep old Teletext going after the digital switchover. From what I understand from Oddity Archive, Teletext never took off in the USA because it was never incorporated into TVs, it was always a subscription service that needed a sepatate set top box. Home video recordings aren’t amazing at archiving Teletext pages, I think you’d need several recordings just to archive one page.

[@nixxie2390]

red button is still going - I can record red button page through my sky box (channel 970 I think)

[@1697djh]

The Retro Computer Museum in Leicester has a version of Ceefax running over the internet, hooked up to a Teletext compatible TV set. Quite a cool implementation using a Raspberry Pi.

[@katashworth41]

I loved Bamboozle on C4, but I am a quiz obsessive. I don’t think I’ll ever forget favourite pages. 360 for motorsport news, 501 for entertainment.

[@JennyAnnTea]

Fantastic as always Adam! I used to love playing Bamboozle on Oracle. We didn’t have a teletext tv, but my mum worked at the house of someone who had one so if I wasn’t at school I used to go with her and sit watching Ceefax and Oracle for hours!

[@FatNorthernBigot]

I didn't see the description for this video. Then, I pressed "Reveal" 😂 The BBC used to broadcast some Ceefax pages on normal telly, in the afternoon. I would then look up the same page on actual Ceefax, and the quality was so much better.😊

[@williamevans9426]

I was a little obsessed with Ceefax and remember their annual Advent Calendar, with the 'windows' accessed via the remote's 'reveal' button. (P.S. I was ten at the time - boy, do I feel old right now!)

[@mgthestrange9098]

I’d totally forgotten about the advent calendar, oh the excitement of pressing reveal!

[@joannedj1]

I also loved the Advent calendar!

[@alanprior7650]

I'd forgotten about that! 🎄🎁✨️

[@kaitlyn__L]

I remember wanting to go and visit my grandmother (as her TV was the only one in the family big and recent enough to have the mandatory Teletext decoder) more often for those advent calendars! Sometimes I'd get quite angry about not being able to go over there on Christmas Eve (as she came to us instead) 😆

[@williamevans9426]

@@kaitlyn__L 😄

[@CulturePhilter]

Used to play Bamboozel all the time as a kid. And the kids section of one of the teletext services used to do a Christmas advent calendar you could “open” every day of December.

[@MegaWayneD]

I was there at the Cambridge Centre for Computing History with a selection of teletext CRT TVs from the different eras, all running live teletext via a Raspberry Pi! (Yes, it's still possible to run live teletext). Jason Robertson the Teletext Archeologist did a demonstration of teletext recovery from a VHS tape, it's fascinating to watch.

[@michaelturner4457]

When I was still at school in 1979 I'd sometimes pop into the local Radio Rentals shop on the way home, and they'd let me see and use the Ceefax and Oracle on the TVs. Our family rented from Radio Rentals, and eventually got our own teletext TV in late 80s when it was more affordable.

[@DoubleD20s]

Excellent. That was a... Reveal-ing video.

[@lockdownlover73]

Just so you know, The BBC still has a type of Ceefax running on their channels, both on Terrestrial and Satellite TV unfortunately it doesn't work on newer Sky TV boxes. German TV (ARD, ZDF) on Astra 19 Satellite, and the main TV channels on Italian TV (Hot Bird) still have Teletext pages. My memories of Ceefax are the news pages, sports results, and the weather forecast. I can’t recall if Ceefax had viewer letters pages but ITV and Channel had theirs. Does anyone remember there were regular contributors? Mrs Long, Northern Ireland, M Long, Belfast), and John Clarke, West London, J C. Uxbridge (That made my day reading their views)

[@stephenjerome4135]

Great video. I have fond memories of using ceefax as a kid back in the day, especially for looking at all the football fixtures and results every week. Ceefax had everything you could wish to see, sport, news, weather, fun games, you could even get stuff like holiday booking info on it. What a great service it was. Of course nowadays we get it all at our fingertips on the internet. Was the guy in the video right when he said the internet killed ceefax stone dead, I think I have to agree and say maybe yes it did, but those childhood memories of seeing the amazing graphics of the ceefax service on the TV never die.

[@michaelturner4457]

I believe the teletext information has been recovered from SVHS tapes. Because that had enough bandwidth to record the teletext data relatively intact. I remember back sometimes in the 80s or 90s we had standard VHS at home, and I tried pressing the text button when playing a tape, but nothing much appeared in teletext mode. SVHS had a greater bandwidth and thus a much sharper picture than VHS.

[@plan7a]

I'd guess you'd get better results with S-VHS, but it was possible to get some results, albeit not perfect. I guess it also depended on how clear the signal was picked up when recording onto a tape. (Also how strong the signal was originally).

[@dickoon]

If you hadn't said that, I was going to!

[@champmegahorse]

Only just discovered this channel - so much interesting stuff on here! I’m all for nostalgia and this is absolutely brilliant. Thank you!

[@AdamMartyn]

Welcome! Happy to have you with us!

[@rogerdarthwell5393]

An excellent video Adam! The anniversary of Ceefax was not complete without your video!

[@brettogden6104]

I have a Grundig V2000 VCR and yes a Teletext TV can decode pages. It's very hit and miss but if a particular page was constant rather than updating on each cycle, each time it came round again the error correcting would often add a few more missing words.

[@andresbravo2003]

Man I’ve been looking for this!

[@gbrads]

That is fantastic that the Ceefax is recoverable from VHS recordings. Thank goodness the VHS system recorded the complete Vertical Interval. I used to be a video tape operator in the states and every once in a while I got the job to convert a PAL 625 vhs tape to NTSC 525 I remember seeing all this “chatter” in vertical interval (blanking) I looked it up in our technical library and realized I had seen my grandfather using it in the UK in the 70’s. A very advanced service I was told it failed in the states because no one could figure out how to price it, Yeay Capitalism, not.

[@chrisst8922]

My favourite bit was Planet Sound on Channel 4. The limited number of pages and characters available meant that this (mainly indie) music magazine had to be sharp and concise. Daily, new releases were reviewed, artists were interviewed and reader's comments were printed in 'The Void'. Edited latterly by John Earls, it enjoyed a standing to rival the physical music press. There was a comprehensive, current, national gig guide that included 30 pages of events in London. Today, music you like could be playing live at some place in your town, but, unless you discover and trawl through individual websites you could miss it, only learning about it when it was too late. Planet Sound ended, not because it was unpopular, but because a 'suitable business model' couldn't be found.

[@theoldham535]

It also had the magical 'Mix' button which meant you could quickly check the big Wednesday night footie scores whilst your folks could carry on watching Dallas.

[@JohnR_ytbe]

So many many memories! Though "several people" hard of hearing? Try 12 million in the UK.

[@NerdNest83]

Hey there, Adam. I'm enjoying your channel. I just stumbled onto it yesterday and I liked learning about Ceefax. I'm surprised that teletext never really caught on in the US. There were attempts in the 1980s, from what I read, as US TV networks CBS and NBC both tried to launch a teletext service in the 1980s, but they both bombed. Several PBS stations used a teletext service as well. The only one that lasted very long was called Electra from Taft Broadcasting for some of its TV stations throughout the US, lasting 11 years. But ultimately, teletext didn't catch on here because there was no national standard for TV stations and manufactures to use. Still, it would have been nice to have something like Ceefax here in the days before the Internet. Anyway, keep up the good work with your channel. Can't wait to see more interesting TV facts from across the pond.

[@Saving7Prodz]

Happy Birthday Ceefax!

[@loureviews]

On the Ceefax on VHS - I clearly remember seeing pages 'captured' when you paused a recording sometimes, and being fascinated by it. Perhaps a quirk of some recorders. I certainly remember the 1980s-90s peak of Ceefax (and Oracle) and yes, it was a major thing back then before the internet. It was cutting edge even when you had to wait for the right page to roll around again!

[@williamevans9426]

'Anyone remember 'VideoPlus' and the codes printed in the TV guides?

[@loureviews]

@@williamevans9426 absolutely!

[@DavidDoom95]

Happy 50th Anniversary to Ceefax!

[@AdamMartyn]

🥳🥳🥳

[@kilodeltaeight]

It absolutely makes sense that VHS would capture Ceefax pages: The data was transmitted as part of the Vertical Blanking Interval, which was a short bit of time at the end of each video frame where there was no picture. This was originally intended to give the electron beam time to move back to the top of the CRT so it could start drawing the next frame, but engineers quickly realized this brief idle period in the signal was incredibly valuable: Closed Captioning, Teletext like Ceefax, even data like video games or copy protection (bleh) for VHS Movies could be snuck in that space. You could actually see the VBI, if you wanted: on old analog TVs where you could manually tune the sync rate, moving the image slightly out of sync would show a black bar. That's the VBI, and if there was Closed Captioning or other data embedded in it, you'd also see lots of white flashing dots - which was the data! Since VHS encoded the entire signal, the VBI was captured as well - allowing you to play back data from the tape. A lot of basic VHS-to-Digital transfers captured the VBI too, and on those digital copies where it shows at the top of the frame you can likewise capture the data.

[@chrislee6650]

I was reading teletext from VHS tapes back in the day, but the line resolution of VHS meant it was all over the place, however when I got a S-VHS video recorder with its extra resolution, that did a remarkable job of storing the teletext data. Given modern eletronics and computers with the easy ability to just keep reading the data from older VHS tapes as it cycles around continually, it should be easily possible to restore it from standard VHS tapes.

[@mateusznowak9143]

In Poland we still have teletext service. Public TV (TVP) transmits "Telegazeta" since 1990 and they still have about 1 million readers. Also, private TV Polsat transmits its own teletext too, but it's filled with adult services advertisements and shady loan offers.

[@Nostalgic80s-nd3qb]

If you remember Ceefax growing up, respect. Here’s to Ceefax.👍👌👍

[@CameronReape]

We need a revival of teletext.

[@debbiemckeown7626]

I still used it and teletext even after I had the internet, my first jobs was working match days at Celtic Park and checked what shifts I would be working on Cefax because I knew if it was a home game I’d be working.

[@amandalewis-im3vf]

I used to love the advent calendar...pressing reveal to see the new addition 😁

[@njm1971nyc]

We had a very nice Sony Trinitron tv in the early 80s, but my dad went for the non-teletext model. The remote control still had all the teletext functions on it though, which was very frustrating, to me, that they didn't do anything!! 😄 Every tv we had after that - always Sony - came with text as standard. When I bought an S-VHS deck around 1988, the teletext worked almost perfectly on recorded tapes. On regular VHS, not so much, but it was partially usable, on a good recording.

[@TDax]

I used to go to LeMans every year. A friend couldn't go one year, she kept up to date on the 24 hr race by watching ceefax.....it updated EVERY 15 minutes lol

[@evonne_o]

Happy birthday Ceefax 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉. Enjoy your holiday Adam.

[@AdamMartyn]

Thank you!

[@what-uc]

I always checked p198 because as well as it being Ceefax in Vision, it was used during continuity to advertise whatever special things Ceefax was doing, and sometimes for things that didn't go out on air. I actually saw the title sequence for Three of a Kind go out live on Ceefax while VT engineers would be putting it on tape within the BBC

[@DissociatedWomenIncorporated]

I’m surprised that it’s considered such a “big discovery” that you can recover teletext pages from VHS recordings. I remember as a little girl sometimes I’d play about with turning on the teletext when watching a video I’d recorded, and seeing that there was a glitched up version of the teletext pages that’d been transmitted during the recording.

[@andrewnile]

It's more that a new technique was devised by Mr Buxton to "unblur" the VBI lines of a standard VHS (not SVHS) recording. This allows for a much higher quality recovery, and the ability to completely restore the pages with a bit of manual touching-up.

[@Jimyjames73]

I remember Ceefax - I really enjoyed using it 😉🙂🚂🚂🚂

[@ynyslochtyn]

Ceefax was great and ITV's Teletext. The text service which replaced it was way inferior and they're even trying to ditch that!

[@starmersbarber]

An excellent piece. Cheers!

[@AdamMartyn]

Thank you!

[@j0hnf_uk]

Ceefax, 'in-vision', replaced the test card in the early 80's on the BBC. But, the music was still the same. Eventually, it would become synonymous with Ceefax, particularly Ceefax AM. I have memories of watching it on late night BBC2 for an hour before, 'The Learning Zone', would come on.

[@joannedj1]

Happy 50th Anniversary, Ceefax! Many fond memories of using the service, plus the equivalent on ITV and Channel 4. I think we, as a family, got our first teletext tv in 1984 and I was always looking things up on it, from the Top 40 singles charts to Premier League latest scores, and medal tables when the Olympics were on. Oh, and we can’t forget the legendary Advent calendars each December in the run-up to Christmas where you could see what pixellated festive item was behind the window by pressing the Reveal button on your remote! (If there can be a Ceefax archive of old pages, I’d like football news from 26th November 1992 please - when the news broke about Eric Cantona moving to Old Trafford. Ta!)

[@mathieuleader8601]

I always remember how clear and colourful the weather forecasts looked on CEEFAX

[@jamesgriffin7962]

My uncle and I would always play Bamboozled on the channel 4 Ceefax and I also remember the music on the BBC version that would come on before BBC 2 would wake up in the morning

[@alanprior7650]

"Watching" cricket on Ceefax was interesting. You'd have the live scoreboard on screen and then the page would flicker (because it had been updated) and you eyes 👀 ran around the screen to see what had changed...was it just end of over,had a wicket fallen,was a four or six scored? It was amazing.😂 Very useful for football results,weather and news. I miss Ceefax. Oh,I also remember the days when Ceefax would go through certain pages before the Saturday (I think) programmes started.

[@ecwnikos]

i hope you have loads of fun on youre holiday.

[@binkwillans5138]

In the70s, during the night, there was no TV, only CEEFAX. We spent hours scrolling.

[@jasonhawkins4528]

Great video I remember games on teletext etc as well

[@plan7a]

Daily stories like "Turner, The Worm" and a lot more also were great!

[@jasonhawkins4528]

@@plan7a Yes I can only remember the worm one but it wa great before the internet

[@PhirePhlame]

By my understanding, _S_VHS recording in particular had a high enough fidelity that the data often _isn't_ too fuzzy to read back.

[@centrevezgaming4862]

Such nostalgia the service it was and snickers are doing an collab with Morrisons to sell limited edition marathon bars

[@HappyCynic]

Digitiser and Bamboozle were my favourites.

[@homogenized]

I'm American, I grew up in the 90s, I had cable... and yeah, you're right when you say teletext didn't really take off here. Don't know why! It's really cool! I've been fascinated by Ceefax for a while now!

[@stanwbaker]

We had NBCi and CBS Extracast in the 80s, which most affiliates couldn't be bothered with. Of course, cable viewers had similar, linear only, feeds on underutilized channels with a local radio station audio underneath. In Chicago and perhaps other markets something called Night Owl was a linear, multi-topic service that ran all night in the opening years of 24 hour broadcasting. Pre-teen me found these mesmerizing. I strongly recommend looking up Infochammel which is a parody and tribute to those days.

[@matthewpayton]

Happy 50th birthday Ceefax

[@vebxenon]

Here in Spain, even the main public channel is now 4K UHD (La 1 from RTVE), and all channels (public and private) are HD and hbbtv is in near every TV network, Teletext still exists and it's alive :-) Even you can read it online! Also, some commercial channels still have their Teletext. In Germany some channels still have teletext too.

[@vebxenon]

Also, some Laserdiscs from Pioneer had Teletext! I have Spellbound from Hitchcock (PAL Laserdisc, purchased in Spain), and if you use the Teletext button, you can see a built Teletext with some information about the film, about the collection, and finally the closed captions, as the audio is in English 😊. Thanks for your videos, Adam. I would like to see a video from you about the Spanish television.

[@thehappyfather2384]

Brill video once again ❤️ remember my mum finding here holidays on there … fiunny we watched the report last night and my 16/ son was howling with laughter and my 19 year old said “ so you remember this mum and dad “ ( howling with her brother 😅 ) their dad soon shut them up “ yea we do but watch year did it finish “ our son soon realised “ oh my days me and sister were both alive “ 😂😂😂😂😂

[@b8nnytez]

there was NOTHING like watching a footie game via Ceefax refreshing, wanting your team to be one or two 😂 more than the last update

[@IsaacKelsall]

If I’m correct, Ceefax started on 23 September 1974. I’m not sure but my father was 2 when it launched.

[@krisstarring]

Of course, over on ITV... "Page the Oracle!" At least until 1992 came around, as not even Oracle was immune to the franchise round and lost out to Teletext Ltd.

[@mgthestrange9098]

Enjoy your holiday Adam, did you book it on Teletext? ⛱️

[@tsimeone]

I remember teletext/ceefax very well. 90s were fun and made some friends via Penpal on channel 4 teletext haha

[@walkingtheboogie]

Some counties still have teletext. ORF (Austria) has their version online, but I'm not sure if it's on TV.

[@NielsPaul]

There is still teletext in Germany, implemented into digital broadcasting. Somehow there still demand for it. But on the other hand telefax also is still a thing.

[@tigerbread78]

Does anyone remember the channel teletext's Digitizer games pages?

[@plan7a]

Absolutely!

[@Eric_Hunt194]

Yes, and the "Planet Sound" music pages too. There's a couple of albums I bought off the back of reviews on there, and there's absolutely no information about one of the artists online today. They even had a "discussion" page where you could send in messages by email or text, which was basically a very slow messageboard!

[@andrewnile]

You can find an archive of most of the issues if you search online for Super Page 58!

[@TheThaddius]

The ceefax video you made was how I found your channel. I typed ceefax into youtube to see clips of it.

[@mpa-vr]

Never experienced Ceefax before. :(

[@NevermoreIQuoth]

Sometimes when bored as a kid i would randomly put in a number to see what page i could find. Once we got Sky and the internet in 2000-2001 i never bothered with it again.

[@TonyFlatleyGUITARCOVERS1982]

The football news page was quality.

[@grantm902]

I've looked at TV circuit diagrams where there's a teletext chip for the European market and a V-chip in the same spot for the US market. Priorities.

[@Tom_murray89]

I loved Ceefax and teletext

[@AdamMartyn]

True classic staples of TV! 📺

[@Tom_murray89]

@@AdamMartyn definitely looking at a tv station’s website or an app isn’t the same

[@njm1971nyc]

Ceefax & Oracle 😊

[@danpretty970]

First to see this video about this incredible service

[@AJGuinness]

I thought it was only S-VHS that was high enough quality to extract the Teletext pages from? Interesting if it's also possible from VHS.

[@illarterate]

Teletext lives! Did you see the Teletext @50 documentary? (Self-promo cuz I edited it, oops...)

[@AdamMartyn]

Drop a link and I'll give it a watch!

[@helenaskew4851]

I watched it for stuff I was into at the time

[@plan7a]

As well as CEEFAX I loved ORACLE and on Channel 4 4-Tel. (There it was two services in one!). Channel 5 also had a limited version of Teletext (or a different relative), and Teletext on ITV/Channel 4 was by nowhere as good, I felt.

[@Eric_Hunt194]

Channel 4's music pages wiped the floor with the BBC's equivalent. During the 1990s and 2000s both versions had a "message board" page where you could send in messages via email or text, and hope they got "printed" in the next few days. At one point there was a bit of a rivalry between the teams behind each channel's Teletext Music Section.

[@hayleywaalen2612]

It looks like a computer within a TV.

[@njm1971nyc]

It was! A very, VERY basic one, but yeah.

[@BBCinWales2020l]

🎉🎉🎉

[@terryo2168]

The only way ro watch Wimbledon play football! 😀😀😀

[@jordancampbell6775]

I always enjoy watching Ceefax as a kid, before CBeebies comes on.

[@MostlyLoveOfMusic]

better times....

[@mathieuleader8601]

reminds me of the old BBC computers from back in the day

[@harryelliott4310]

Ceefax

[@OfflineSetup]

Did the internet kill it? I'm sure there was a gradual decline but it still seemed to be popular with people coming home plonking themselves on the sofa and going to 101. For the many that had a computer it was in the other room and the "internet" was not as integrated into our lives as it is now. I recall a lot of people being frustrated at how poor (in fact unwatchable) the digital alternative to teletext was, and how the promised improvements to it never arrived.

[@what-uc]

Ceefax and Oracle delivered a similar level of service. In the early 80s Ceefax was more organised and more polished. In the late 80s Oracle got better, while in 1989 Ceefax got rather boring with lots of news, poor graphics and no fun stuff, but it got more appealing with a revamp in the 1996 which included the Entertainment pages. Teletext Ltd wasn't as good as Oracle but it was more interesting than Ceefax at the beginning of 1993

[@jasdog71]

Has Count Binface seen this yet?

[@gman83090]

Telet text is sill used for sky racing its called sky racing text

[@DissociatedWomenIncorporated]

BRING IT BACK!!!

[@UKCoastwalk]

We used to book our ski holidays using ceefax, you had to be quick though noting what offers where available. If you missed the details you'd have to wait for 80 odd pages to scroll around!

[@bytehigh]

Ceefax never sold holidays, Oracle and Teletext Ltd did.

[@WeAreSTV1_Inc]

3 first comments 💀 anyway, great video

[@AdamMartyn]

Thank you!

[@marcusblackwell2372]

Was CEEFAX a British thing, or was it international?

[@ElectroStorm_Gaming]

1st!

[@NicolasPetrosLanning]

SUPER CLICKBAITY LOOKING TITLE WRITING!!!

[@AdamMartyn]

AND YET HERE YOU ARE!!!

[@NicolasPetrosLanning]

@@AdamMartyn WHAAT THE FUCK

[@TellyMadness_]

where's the clickbait Nicolas? enlighten us

[@MrBluemurderian]

@TellyMadness_ Yeah, just ignore this guy, on another video (alongside MD Genjin on his channel), he said in the comment section that ITV needs to be shut down because they stopped caring about children's programmes... Enough said. P.S: I am a autistic teenager. Don't be fooled by my profile picture.