BBC TWO - Ident Morris Full 16/05/05 into Ceefax

You are refering to the network BBC 2 Morris Dancers Symbol which, just before it finished, switched from 16:9 to 4:3.

All the Symbols are 16:9. The jump to 4:3 was caused by the Pages from Ceefax which followed the Symbol; these being presented in 4:3. Normally a switch from 16:9 to 4:3 is hidden by a V or U fade. In this case they simply cut from one to the other, which made the switch noticable.

Something else I noticed... No Ceefax Header Page.

In days gone by an intro slide (which looked like a page from Ceefax) was normally used at the start of any transmission of Pages from Ceefax. This allowed the director to hold on said slide until Ceefax rolled on to a new page, before then cutting to Ceefax itself. Thus avoiding joining Ceefax just as it was about to roll on to a new page.

However, no Ceefax Header Page was used on Sunday... and as luck would have it... Ceefax changed page about 2 seconds after they cut to it.

I wonder... was the Header Page not transfered to the Broadcast Centre before the DTA in TVC closed???

As was said in a previous thread, the Ceefax header page which they used to use was ridiculosly out of date - so they obviously got rid of it with the switch to the new facility - as well as a troublesome Ceefax generator by the looks of things.

One thing I did notice on yesterday morning's gap, there was a page showing at one point that had a line of text missing for a brief moment - a spot of bad reception at the BBC perhaps?

I suspect you saw the format change for the programme it was introducing, in this case ceefax, which isn't widescreen.

I take your point about a specific Header Page being out of date and dropped (though I've never paid such close attention as to notice), it is more the lack of any Header Page that I noticed.

Gone are the days, it seems, when care was taken to only join Ceefax just after the page had changed. Not easily achieved without the help of a Header Page. Surely a new up to date one could have been made at little expense.

As someone who doesn't usually sit up to watch Pages from Ceefax... what was the fault with the old generator?

Around Christmas (the last time it was used I believe) it seemed to develop a fault and had intermittent green flashes on screen - so it was swapped for the new one which has a green "152" in the top left.

The "new" generator did in fact first appear on 17 December 2000. Strangely it was not adopted permanently when the 88-02 machine was retired.

As for the header page; it was shown for exactly 10 secs at the start, with no connection to when the page turns over. It was also very unusual for the music to start over the title page.