TV Home Forum

Channel 4 Text relaunches 30th September

Ceefax Relaunch Sucked... (August 2003)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
:-(
A former member
C-500 is only Ceefax's kids pages, but GameStation (535) and Entertainment (540) are moving too. In fact, all 500's pages on Ceefax are moving except the lottery, and the only new page numbers revealed.are The Vibe (moving from 561 to 534) and Entertainment news (from 540 to 500). Very annoying! Less than four hours to go...
BR
Brekkie
First saw notice of the Ceefax changes on Saturday with very limited info(2 days notice), while the info on C4 has been there at least a month before relaunch date - with a full page guide.
PE
Pete Founding member
oh this is annoying. It's going to take me ages to remember Chatterbox is now on 523 and not 591 (I've just got the hang of it changing from 592),

When are they going to get all this stuff on BBCi Text anyhow? It's useless without all the decent stuff from Ceefax. Hopefully it'll all come on when the new service comes on.
AN
Andrew Founding member
Hymagumba posted:
oh this is annoying. It's going to take me ages to remember Chatterbox is now on 523 and not 591 (I've just got the hang of it changing from 592),


Indeed, and whats with that awful pink on yellow heading!

I still forget and dial 110 for TV plus on Teletext
TV
tvarksouthwest
Oh dear...what a disaster. Content wise, everything is still there, but adopting the same look is almost like a return to the dark days of the 1989 relaunch.

Backchat, Newsround and Chatterbox all had distinctive, individual looks before today. Now they don't; P500 looks like something left over from pre-1982 Ceefax.

It'll be interesting to watch viewer's comments in the coming days. Ceefax desperately needs a makeover - it's had the same look since before the BBC1 balloon - but hopefully one which will make more eyecatching use of teletext's graphical restrictions.
PE
Pete Founding member
Whatever happened to love lovely ghaphics they used to have in the mid 90s? The ones you see on the opening/closing slide of Luxxie's favourite show - Pages From Ceefax ?
:-(
A former member
Ceefax page 100 will be changing - it still says 500 is kids, 540 is entertainment, 560 is music, and 570 is films - the only 500 section which didn't move was the lottery, though that still took on the magenta and yellow look. The colours clash!

Oh, and the Newsround pages could do to use the Newsround logo like they used to!
RO
rob Founding member
I was a bit disappointed with this relaunch. Firstly, the generic scheme is cack. Yellow on Pink? Reminds me of Mr Blobby (please dear god...)

I had to go through 2 pages to find the page I was looking for, and they only gave us 2 days notice.

However, it's nice to see the showbiz pages getting 1 page each. It does look better.
:-(
A former member
If that was in black and white, the magenta and yellow would be the same shade of grey, because magenta is equal of red and blue, and yellow is equal red and green. They clash. the word News in the old Entertainment News logo was those colours, but it didn't get used everywhere, or even over the entire heading, so it wasn't so bad. Another relaunch before Xmas please!

14 days later

RO
rob Founding member
Well, it's the end of 4-Tel tonight...

At midnight (I think) Teletext on 4 takes over...
MB
Mark Boulton
I think in this day and age Teletext headers should be created by software that grabs the pixel blocks from small-size TruType fonts. Imagine Arial 9pt or MS Sans Serif 8.5pt grabbed and exploded into Teletext-size blocks, so that the lettering looks like an icon caption zoomed in?

I think it would look quite stylish. You could have "Arial Low-Res" and "Tahoma Low-Res" liberally sprinkled about to give stylistic variation between the various sections...
RU
russnet Founding member
rob posted:
Well, it's the end of 4-Tel tonight...

At midnight (I think) Teletext on 4 takes over...


Here in the East, there's no 4-Tel service at all for it's last night. Although the clock is working, the change over hasn't happened as of yet.

As a goodbye for 4-Tel. Here is the 4-Tel mascot of the 80's up until the 1990 Broadcasting Act changed the 4-Tel service (post 1993) to what you see now.

Meet 4-T

http://www.russ-net.freeserve.co.uk/images/fourt.jpg

Newer posts