5text

i know it was widely anticipated, but 5 text has been discontinued

it seems, it was probably terminated exactly at 12 midnight, as this capture was taken at abour 12.30

ancilliary text is still available in the 500s

http://www.tvhome.f2s.com/upload/Five100.jpg

Which text service is taking over from 5text?

Surely there's not going to just be the channel 5 ancillary text pages, like 4-tel-on view on Channel 4 and 600's on ITV.

Is there going to a text service of News, Sport, Weather, Travel, Entertainment etc on the channel. If so, when is it likely to come into operation.

Not exactly an Oracle style goodbye then...

Well I didn't see a single announcement on the service that it was closing in the days running up to it. Or was I just not looking in the right place ?

There was a rumour that it was closing down - unfortunately it was wrongly reported and the rumour came out that Teletext Limited i.e. the Teletext provider for ITV and C4 was closing down.

C5 corrected that mistake, but mentioned nothing about their own bskyb provided service closing down. I don't see why this was done at all - 5 text was a very good service.

It's now like the early days when you are told to go to 500 to see a very limited service - the original 5 text only had around 15 pages if I remember rightly.

I home something does come along to replace it.

[quote] Conrad on 12:06 pm on Jan. 1, 2002
Not exactly an Oracle style goodbye then...
[quote]

[quote] Well I didn't see a single announcement on the service that it was closing in the days running up to it. Or was I just not looking in the right place ? [quote]

One thing you could say about the old Oracle was that they were good mannered when they were closing down. Channel 5 text were so abrupt. As soon as 12 midnight came along, a sudden halt with that unfriendly P100 sudenly appearing. I would have expected better manners form Channel 5 than that.

Where is Teletext on ITV? Cannot see it. But it's showing on Channel 4 fine.

Well, if anyone had looked on the ITC's website, you would have seen an announcement saying that the existing holders Sky were losing their license from the 31st of December, and that they were looking for bidders for a new license. Check it out, if you've got £40,000 up your sleeve.

This is what my analogue satellite box is showing for Channel 5:
http://www.tvhome.f2s.com/upload/c5.jpg

Still: makes a change from 'This Astra service will terminate on 31st December. For more information...'

They (Sky 5 Text) decided that there was no chance of the service breaking even and decided to give back the license to the ITC. I suspect that the fact that they have discontinued analogue text (well apart from adverts) on the Sky channels has something to do with it.

I doubt anyone will take up the license analogue teletext is on the way out, there are only 2 companies that would anyway - Teletext and Intelfax, it's not worth anyone starting from scratch.

what's happened to 5 text? is this the beginning of the end for all analogue text services?

Read the rest of the thread...

...and no, it's not the end for analogue services. CEEFAX has a public service remit of course, so that would only go on terrestrial when the BBC analogue service is shut down. EDIT: Dunno about Teletext, but I would guess that will be OK too.

(Edited by moss at 9:17 pm on Jan. 1, 2002)

maybe the broadcasters are concentrating on digital text.
analogue text as we know it is going to end sooner or later just like analogue tv.