Mass Media & Technology

Teletext data as .vtc files

How to view them? (June 2016)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
BH
BillyH Founding member
Just going back through my old hard drive from my long-ditched Windows 98 computer from the early noughties, and found the folder for the Teletext encoder that came free with the old TV capture card I bought at the time. Running the program itself doesn't work on my current Windows 7 machine - it just gives a ton of error messages and fails to boot, plus with Teletext (and analogue TV) no longer existing it would be fairly useless anyway. But then I spotted the 'Cache' folder...

It looks like the program's saved a small selection of various Ceefax and ITV Teletext pages from random dates in time, in the .VTC file format. Opening them with Notepad you can read them all in plain text format, and the dates are all over the place - earliest stuff is from 2002 and latest from 2005, which was just before I upgraded the computer. I don't think the entire indexes have been saved or anywhere near it, just whatever pages I presumably loaded at the time - having a quick look through Notepad that's a grab bag of news, sport, TV listings and various entertainment pages. Just found in one file the top 10 video game charts for the Nintendo 64, Playstation 2, Game Boy Advance and Sega Dreamcast!

Question is, is there a way to turn them back into the original graphic Teletext files or is that a lost cause? Now Teletext is a thing of the past it would be nice to have at least some sort of small archive, if not a comprehensive one. Thanks for any help!
LL
London Lite Founding member
Considering I have a Kodi add-on which decodes the old style teletext from the German channels on Zattoo, there has to be a way to do this?
DO
dosxuk
Can you (and are you willing to!) upload the files somewhere? If you can read content in notepad, it's almost certain you can resurrect the original pages. The graphics / colours / font choices were all embedded in the same text data as the rest of the content, so if the words are there, they should be too.
NG
noggin Founding member
Yes - if the .vtc files have ASCII-like text in them, chances are the non-text stuff is standard teletext control codes (just like the BBC Micro used to use in Mode 7) that controlled foreground and background colour, flashing, double height, contiguous or non-contiguous graphics etc.
EL
elmarko
Can we maybe look at how to get your original software running? Have you tried compatibility modes etc? At the very last resort a virtual PC setup with Win98 on it may be able to help you extract the pages/data?

Failing that you're looking at getting a coder to write a new modern app that can parse the data in those files.
DO
dosxuk

Failing that you're looking at getting a coder to write a new modern app that can parse the data in those files.


Sounds like a fun weekend project...
DA
davidhorman

Failing that you're looking at getting a coder to write a new modern app that can parse the data in those files.


Sounds like a fun weekend project...


Only if you're a massive nerd.

Me first!

Anyone else have Mikefax at school? I spent hours on that.
BH
BillyH Founding member
Thanks everyone - I've made some progress on this, I've found a few newer Teletext editors online and after changing the file extension from .vtc to .vtx (various file formats such as .etp and .bin seem to be accepted but not .vtc, I just picked the one closest to the original), and removing a few lines of blank code at the start of the file, I've managed to get a - highly scrambled - version of the index page. Removing none of the lines either shows a blank screen or random symbols, so I guess I need to remove something in the file to make it load properly, I'm just not sure what yet.

I'll try some more tinkering, in the meantime - in case anyone wants to have a go themselves - here's one of the unedited originals I've uploaded and one of the biggest, BBC2 Ceefax from January 26th, 2002. Open it in Notepad to read.

https://up.metropol247.co.uk/Billy/BBC2.vtc
EL
elmarko
Don't edit that in notepad it's not the best tool for the job. You'll be looking more at a binary editor, but then you have to determine the protocol/control characters.

Is there a spec anywhere for the file formats?
DA
davidhorman
This page seems to cover most of the control codes.

I'm trying to find an accurate bitmap of the BBC B's teletext characters, but I'm having trouble. All the emulators either use a non-authentic font, or draw anti-aliased characters Sad
DO
dosxuk
Might dig out the RISC PC from under the stairs, it can do proper mode 7 graphics, so could be used as a source of the character bitmaps.

No direct data transfer though as it only has a floppy drive and I don't own any discs or other drives...
DA
davidhorman
No need! I've managed to get bitmaps out of a BBC emulator. Thanks though!

In the meantime, here's the hidden teletext message I discovered in a 1980s episode of Doctor Who (the text is my translation of the graphics blocks above):

http://horman.net/images/twindilemma.jpg

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