BBCi / Press Red

Ceefax is digital! etc. etc...

Agreed: and the fact that some sub-sections are forced to use numbers from outside the main section (IIRC horse-racing results dont come under the sport 3XX numbers scheme) because of the old Ceefax numbers is equally baffling. Why not re-vamp the BBCi numbers so that they make sense, and then just adapt the Ceefax numbers to fit.

Well this is exactly what used to happen with the BBCi bar. They merged the two because it was thought to be too confusing.[/quote]

It seems like the abolition of the BBCi brand on the digital text service follows a wider shift in the way the BBC brands its generic services. The BBC website dropped the bbc.co.uk branding in favour of simply the BBC logo. So it is now just the BBC website. The digital text/'interactive' service is now just the BBC interactive service/red button.

I suppose it is strengthening the BBC's overall brand in areas where you would naturally expect them to be - so they do not need seperate brands. And as they are now referred to as 'the website' or 'the red button', they are much more self-explanatory. Although BBCi had become a fairly strong brand, I don't think many people actually fully understood what it was, so this is a smart move.

Perhaps it's also got something to do with the success of the BBC iPlayer and to prevent confusion between the two services? I've heard several people refer to the BBC iPlayer as BBCi on occasions.

Always been a point of debate, but I'd argue the multistream services are probably the first thing people consider to be Interactive TV, rather than the opportunities companies take to rob your money.

http://www.ceefax.tv/cgi-bin/gfx.cgi?page=697_2&font=big&channel=bbc1

Oh...and 1001 posts? Time for a beer I think.

Maybe now they'll redesign the "Press ( i ) " graphic, so it isn't so ambiguous, given that all Sky and many DTT remotes have an i button on them.

Yep - the on-screen logo just needs to be a simple Red dot (represented here by *), a Red dot and an explanation (i.e. * Multiscreen, or * Interactive), or a (* Press Red) logo?

Sky's simple red dot works very well for me.

Not all true interactive services are paid for.

I think the problem is that most people just want to veg out in front of the telly, they don't want to have to press buttons and think.

In rise of the internet is also to blame for its lack of success - it's made making teletext/digital text obsolete too

I agree that simple is better, and the speed of the boxes is a factor - digital text on a nice, modern, fast box is quite good. The problem is that the box needs to load software first and then the service

However they shouldn't fall into the trap of replicating 1970's technology onto digital TV. Teletext is what it is because of the technical constraints of 30 years ago and there's little point doing it now, other than for kitsch retro novelty.


I agree about iPlayer on Virgin, the traditional way of going in by the menus is far better than the BBC interface and of course you get all the channel 4 stuff listed alongside.

Yes - absolutely. If the CEEFAX team had the technology now to design the system with, they wouldn't have created the system they did then... The design of the system was very much dictated by the technology then available (1kilobyte of screen RAM was quite a lot in the early 70s!)

I think the biggest problem with the interactive viewing is that it is far too slow. You press the Red Button, there's a jump in the programme, an information box pops up saying 'please wait' then anything up to a minute later the homepage will appear. Repeat this several times for every page and it soon becomes tedious.

I wonder if in the grand scheme of things if people actually bother with it. The biggest usage I can think of is where there is no alternative - such as the news multiscreen, multi-sport events like the Olympics and music festivals. Otherwise I can imagine people turning onto terrestial and using Ceefax for the fact that it's simpler, quicker and more informative.

If the Red Button could be quicker then I think it may take off a bit more, but I don't think this is possible due to bandwith problems.

The speed does tend to vary. On my old Sky box it was very slow indeed to load anything. On my newer Sky+ (PVR3), it's much faster.

The best I've found though was on a cheap Freeview box from Asda, on which the BBCi bridge appears almost instantly on pressing the red button.