On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 10:09:55AM +0900, Paul Lester wrote:
> I remember hearing that in Britain they have had some kind of
> interactive TV for years... long before SMS. Some kind of extra
> screen??
> That startled me.
That is teletext, and it's used in many parts of Europe. Each channel
has its own set of teletext pages. Each page has 23(?) lines of 40
characters; there are control codes for colour, low-res graphics, and
so on. When you switch a TV into text mode, it will load up the index
page, which lists sub-indexes and popular pages like the latest news
stories. The pages are numbered and normally accessed by entering
their numbers on the remote. A later addition to the system allows
each page to have up to 4 hyperlinks corresponding to 4 colour-coded
buttons on the remote control. Pages are automatically refreshed, so
content that's too large for a single screen can be divided into
sub-pages that appear in rotation.
It's not very interactive or fast, but it used to be the quickest way
to get news and other information - and still is for many people.
It's free of charge, of course, but the commercial operators can make
money through advertising banners and sub-pages and by premium phone
charges for competitions and classified ads (entered on the phone
keypad with sloooow feedback on the TV). They also sell some of the
teletext capacity for private broadcasting of data (presumably
encrypted).
--
Ben Hutchings | personal web site: http://womble.decadentplace.org.uk/
Who are all these weirdos? - David Bowie, about L-Space IRC channel #afp
Received on Fri Sep 27 15:58:35 2002