TTTV Text Off Air

[quote="nwtv2003"]Well exactly 12 years to the day they've started they've closed down the service. I presume that Scottish TV, Grampian TV, UTV and Channel aren't affected by the closure.[quote]

Scottish TV's text, Scot-Text, is certainly still up and running, and I presume therefore that Grampian is still going. Don't know about Channel or UTV.

Oops!

That must be a fault at Huntshaw then, Simon.

It SHOULDN'T be.

Yorkshire Text is also still available. There's a flashing bit of text at the foot of page 601 saying that this service will no longer be available from tommorow and to turn to page 625 for more info.

Although page 625 is a preview of Midsomer Murders!

Some of them started much later than others, I remember the 600s in London being just placeholder screens for an 'ancillary test service' for a long while,

regional identity getting killed off in layers, I think that was the only place to see the chevron, were Yorkshire still using the chevron on their ancillary text?

Was the decision to axe the ancillary services quite a sudden one? I ask because Westcountry Text over the last year or so seemed to be undergoing some renewed development after 3 years of neglect under the 'Carlton Plus' banner; it got it's own TV listings back instead of referring you to TV Plus on teletext, the regional programme section actually got updated regularly, and the engineering information was always bang up to date.

Although content-wise it was much slimmer than it had been previously, they were bothering to maintain that content after several years of letting it go stagnant, and for that to happen only for the service to be pulled a year later I find quite odd.

Westcountry Text was probably the best of the ancillary services - it launched long before most other regions did, it contained lots of information (for example transmitter information with precise reasons for engineering work - eg. bulb changing) and they did it in house.

The channel identifer some TVs flash up with has changed in Meridianland from itv1 Meridian to just itv1 too

Asa

Yep - this was flagged up when Meridian's local 600-699 text services disappeared when they moved all the regional facilities from Northam to Whiteley, and didn't bother doing anything about local 600-699 text insertion.

Meridian haven't had 600-699 for a little while now...

I assume this means the disappearance of "LONDON WEEKEND TV" at the bottom of my TV screen during the best days of the week then? Shame really...it felt so ironic to have it there at the bottom of the screen when during the week it was just "itv1" (sometimes with or without the London)

Why are they getting rid of Regional Pages 600?
I sure it don't cost alot to run!
Am I right?

Not true with regards to the 12 years. I imagine the service was rolled out around the regions at seperate times as Anglia didn't get their ancilliary service until 1994 or 1995. Although we did have the GMTV pages from 1993. Westcountry were the first ancilliary service to go live in late 1993.