Does Regional Teletext still exist?

Not really in the know about Teletext, but since the merger has Teletext still been handled regionally or is it a national teletext, or if it is still regional have the regional bits been dumbed down?

The Carlton/Granada merger has nothing to do with Teletext on ITV, which is run by a company called Teletext Ltd. Their licence would not have been affected in any way.

Which merger is this? Are you confusing it with the Granada-Carlton merger? If so then what they do is completely different to what Teletext does as they are a seperate franchise and thank god for that!

Scary, we posted the same reply together!

So who actually edits the Teletext, is it teletext themselves?

Teletext provides stuff from pages 100-599 and the itv regional company is responsible for pages 600-699

Basically there are (or there were!) 15 ITV regional licences, 1 Breakfast licence and 1 Teletext licence (which also transmits on Ch4) All franchises were awarded in Autumn 1991 with the exception of the teletext licence which was awarded in April 1992.

Teletext UK Ltd replaced ORACLE at the end of 1992. It is a seperate company who have their own office in London. There is talk of the one in Scotland closing down.

russnet, LWT still has a page on page 600 at weekends

Yes along with Central and Anglia but as someone else has mentioned, Teletext as in the company who supplies the service from Page 100-599 has no control whatsoever on pages 600 to 699 as they belong into the hands of the relevant regional company.

It was the same on page 300-399 in the days of 4 Tel prior to Teletext taking the service over when it was moved to the 400's. 4 Tel was responsible by Intelfax and had no control by Teletext.

The 600s service and the former 300s service on Channel 4 were known as ancillary services and could only contain programme information only. Any advertising in the section must have been local advertisements only. So they were very limited into what they could actually transmit.

Besides on a different note, if you want to see something interesting. Press 798 and possibly 704 and 799 (assuming it still works) for some interesting effects.

Yes there are 3 services broadcast in the VBI (the vertical Blanking interval - the white flashing bit at the top of the screen) - Teletext UK, a non-public service which is owned by a company called DBI which broadcasts on ITV (and i think also channel4) and each broadcaster gets space to run their own ancillary text service and subtitles*. This text service can only be related to programming and advertising isn't allowed.

*Oracle did subtitling until they closed then it was passed over to the TV companies - they are nothingto do with Teletext UK


Anyone remember Televox?

TELEVOX!!! Yeah...I remember that! I never understood it though. You had to press the "time" button on your remote control didn't you and type in T33:33 and then the Televox page would come on. But I dunno what else Televox was for cos I was quite young at the time.

With Televox you went to page 777 (i think), typed 3333 into the time page bit and it gave you a phone number. When you phoned it then gave you a code number which you typed instead of the 3333. You navigated through pages using voice commands on the phone (this was before tone dialling was widespread).

Only you saw the pages you were selecting unless someone else guessed and entered the 4 digit code, although you could grab pages if you were quick enough on the Hold button when you saw it appear

A quite clever idea but it didn't last long.

There was a similar service to Televox on Sky One around 1995 called Interactive. I think it was on the 500s and like the previous poster said, if you was quick enough you could press hold and read what was on the page or if you a knew a page number you could see them play a game or I do remember seeing someones bank statement on there as there was a banking service on interactive as well. Hardly discreet!

There are some televox pictures on mb21 teletext then and now.