How Did Teletext Quietly Disappear?

In the mid-1970s, when color televisions were considered a luxury, efforts were made to make television screens more information-filled. Teletext, which was especially a status symbol of its time, It added a text-based adventure to our colorful world with just a few button presses.

With the spread of the internet, the shoe was thrown off the rails teletext, It was both the information and entertainment channel of a generation. Weather forecast, breaking news and sports scores were at our fingertips with just a single button in front of the television. But then things changed…

As televisions expanded their colorful worlds in the mid-1970s, John Adams was looking for a way to deepen this magic even further.

At this moment on stage He pulled out the teletext. Major television broadcasters such as BBC and ITV, They decided to bring a text-based information display to our screens. This adventure, which started in the United Kingdom in 1974, remained popular throughout the world until the spread of the Internet.

The rise of teletext quickly turned the televisions in our homes into a source of information. Teletext, which has been shelved since we could access all information when we had the internet at our disposal, was the easiest way to access information with a remote control and a few buttons at that time. It would take years for it to arrive in our country.

John Adams, an engineer working at Philips, discovered that it was possible to fit information on a television screen.

This unusually developed technology seemed a bit impossible. However, seeing that this was actually something that could be done, Adams carried out research on this subject. He developed Teletext, where we get information on the TV screen.

This creative solution was approved by the BBC even though it was costly at the time. First Teletext system called Ceefax was introduced to the world. Other companies also intensified the competitive environment by announcing their own systems: These rival systems were ORACLE and Prestel. At first, no standards were set for these systems, so the market did not know which system to invest in.

But eventually a standard was agreed upon and soon this standard spread everywhere. Teletext adventure that’s it So it started.

Ceefax, which officially entered our lives in 1976, could initially be monitored by attaching a separate device.

However, in a short time, televisions with Teletext were launched and the audience increased rapidly. Especially by 1982, portable televisions It was now possible to receive Ceefax and ORACLE publications on it.

Teletext, on the other hand, spread rapidly and was developed as much as possible. In fact, a company called Beeb has created a website running on the BBC Acorn microcomputer. telesoftware He even started to put it on the market. Players can broadcast via teletext using an antenna and a small decoder. They could download programs and games.

This service continued until the late 1980s. However We cannot say that much effort has been made to improve teletext broadcasts. Of course, more advanced standards were created, but companies were reluctant to produce receivers compatible with these standards. For this reason, Teletext broadcasts continued to consist of pixelated and noisy characters as we remember them.

Although this format offers obvious advantages over other broadcast systems, we would be unfair to say that it has not evolved over time.

Last minute news, match results and stock market The ability to quickly announce information that needs to be updated instantly, such as, was a must for this technology. It didn’t matter to Teletext that millions of users were trying to access the page at the same time; these releases were still going strong regardless of the number of buyers.

Unlike websites that crash when too many users load, we cannot say that the number of users is that important in Teletext. For example, when websites crashed during the September 11 attacks, many people searched for news. He was headed for Ceefax.

Let’s come to our Teletext adventure.

In the early 90s, a new era began in Turkey. The first Teletext broadcast called “Telegün”, launched by TRT in 1990, With the proliferation of private channels, many broadcasters have embarked on their own Teletext adventure. However, it is still difficult to say that these publications were perfect for that period.

Most of the time there was a process where we had to wait to access a page.

Because pages were coded in the spaces between frames, users had to wait for their televisions to register the information, especially if the pages were far apart. This also delayed the loading of pages. Additionally, data It was transmitted via TV signals, which could cause interference problems. Pages were not loading correctly, characters were corrupted. Finance pages, in particular, had an extra impact in this regard.

Teletext may not be very attractive to the current young generation, many of them may even be hearing this name now. To see these pages on time and get the most up-to-date information, click on the remote control. While pressing the TXT key is enough Nowadays everything is on the internet, at your fingertips.

Strangely enough, Teletext still has an audience today, even though it has become obsolete. This technology, which is preferred by the generation we generally call ‘boomer’, We can say that it experienced a great boom and then lost its place with the rise of the internet.

Continuing these publications TV channels still exist. Who knows, maybe Teletext will appear on the scene again after a long break in case of a global disaster, even though it is on the verge of oblivion!

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