Teletext on DSat

Following the Scottish Switchover thread I have had a quick scan through the channels on Sky and notice the following still broadcasting teletext services (I notice I can receive teletext even on channels I don't subscribe to):

BBC News, CBBC, Cbeebies (page 100 and 888), BBC1, BBC2 (888 only)
Channel 4 - full service (weather, horoscopes and racing)
Travel Channel - full service (holiday advertising)
TCM - full service (schedule information for TCM UK and Nordic)
British EuroSport - full service (pan-European sport news and schedules)
At the Races and Sky Sports News - full service (racing)
CNBC (page 100 only)
Zee TV & Zee Cinema - full service (schedule information)
TV5 Europe - full service (schedules in French)

Teletext is still widespread on digital TV elsewhere in Europe - so pan-European channels (TCM, Travel Channel, Eurosport etc.) presumably are more likely to offer it?

The UK is relatively unusual in having something other than Teletext on satellite and OTA, though some providers have concentrated on their websites in recent years, as dual-screen viewing has become more common.

Yes, you will. The VBI is not encoded, there's no need, and even if it was, the MPEG compression would totally
corrupt the teletext data anyway !

So, what happens is the data is sent uncompressed in a data channel with the main transport stream. The set top box then takes it, and reinserts it as dots in the VBI it has to generate for its analogue output, so as far as your TV is concerned it's receiving a standard video signal with teletext data.

This process, either by accident, or deliberately, circumvents the encryption process. In fact if you manually add RTE's channels, you can see their Aertel pages too

Some other satellite platforms in Europe do encrypt their teletext streams, it is not that common though.

I remember flicking through Paramount Comedy Channel's text service. It was rather good.

Yeah, their Mailbox pages in particular.