The end of Pages from Ceefax

Yes, I'm sure I remember PFC on 1 and 2 at the same time showing different pages in the 1980s.

Of course C4 also did the same in that decade for Oracle. (And S4C for Sbectel ?)
There might well have been teletext in vision on three out of four channels at times.

Didn't the ITV Jobfinder service that ran overnight in some regions, use 'Oracle in vision' techniques too ?

There must be some free repeats that the BBC could show. These might cost some money initially due to needing to be subtitled (if the subtitles don't already exist in the archive) but how much would repeats of old episodes of Blue Peter, Nationwide, Top Gear and other BBC productions costs? If not complete episodes then how about clips, like STV do overnight?

They said pages could take over a minute to load! I don't think so, unless you were waiting for the subpage to come round.

These videos from the same date prove that PFC did indeed run simultaneously on both BBC1 and BBC2 at times as you will see from these YouTube examples from 1993 featuring continuity from Malcolm Eynon and Sally Lawrence:




I'd also like to add my thanks to Thegeek for uploading the excellent pictures of the Ceefax "generator" - fascinating to see how it works after all these years of watching PFC. I do hope if that equipment is being decomissioned it's going to a good home rather than being shoved in a skip!

Just a question though (to add to those already asked) what is "overnight to GW"? Would that be Glasgow? Because I remember sometimes seing P141 being shown when BBC1/BBC2 Scotland had a Ceefax gap when the network didn't and sometimes it would be on P141 before being corrected to P152.

Although it looks like both channels were showing the pages so there weren't necessarily two generators being used.

Does anyone else remember the enhanced resolution teletext that they used in the late 80's/early 90's? I don't think any receivers were sold but it was shown on the in-vision version. The only difference I remember was that the pages appeared on a colour gradient background rather than black

Level 2 teletext
http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/ceefax/in-vision.shtml

Though it's a different decoder, as you can tell by the serif font. The other decoder we have lying around produces an output very similar to the one which makes it on air, I believe - but it's not been powered up for a while.

You're welcome! I'll have to get some pictures of other curiosities around TVC before we leave. I believe the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park have been in touch about getting hold of some of the Ceefax kit - hopefully we'll be able to help them.

Before my time, I'm afraid! Anyone know what was on 141?
Pacific Quay does have its own Ceefax decoder, although it's a bit flaky at times (or at least the PAL to SDI decoder was), so a lot of the time the London one would be used instead. The Glasgow one is fed from the router, and as you can see from the photos the London one needs plugged - so lazy engineers often left it on NET2, even if it was on BBC One Scotland.

Thanks from me too, thegeek!

141 was a 'news digest' page recently - not sure what it was previously.

I think the one that was in use up until today was a component output. I recall in the earlier days of DTT/D-Sat PFC had PAL footprints all over them. Or is it just that a better A-D has been in use in recent years ?

Any Mr Geek, a nice effort, thank you for the insights and pictures, and thank whoever organised this morning's events too. Mrs Markymark almost showed a glimmer of interest this morning, after her irritation at our alarm clock going off 15 mins earlier than usual at 05:45

I can just about remember one particular Ceefax generator that would display the Fasttext coloured keys at the bottom of the screen (numbers rather than words I think) - on occasions I believe these were blanked out by a magenta bar!

And then of course there was the generator which would display the pages without the P152/CEEFAX header line (although it would appear occasionally)...

Something tells me I spent a bit too much of my youth watching PFC and the test card!

It was still PAL - footprint is visible if one looks closely.

Level 2 (or is it 2.5?) decoding comes as standard in most-of-all Panasonic LCD sets sold in the last few years, incidentally. Some German Broadcasters use it, perhaps others too.