Text on Text

The love affair that never was. As most of any readers who stumble upon my fair site are likley to be mainly Americans I feel I should offer an explanation to why teletext has remained a forign rarity in one of the worlds most technolgically advanced countries. I didn't quite get this myself until starting this blog. The most basic explanation is that the televisons could not brodcast teletext to the same quality as most of europe. At least in the eighties, when teletext was first considered in America. Teletext is brodcast on VBI(Vertical Blanking Intervel) from what I know of this it is a group of elctron beams which are brodcast to the televison. They scroll over the televison in vertical lines to make frame trasistion seamless. Thats not really important though. Because some of this vertical lines are not visbale on screens and so are unused. Unless of course there is teletext. The problem with America is or was that a lesser proportion of the VBI is left free. Around 8-10 lines less I beleive. This means any teletext would look even clunkier and blockier than usual.

There are other reasons Teletext never took of in America thoguh. For one thing the government mainly left it's development "to the markets." This meant their was no definite teletext form for along time. Many small local stations simply copied the format of the UK's Ceefax or Frances Antiope service. Legally I should add. But on the most part they were brodcasting to no-one as Televison manufactures were reluctant to make sets with the de-coders due to the lack of agreement between the companies over the techical brodcasting deatails of Teletext. Also teletext sets cost alot to make and buy back in then so there was a high possibilty of losing lot of money. Since Teletext is supported mainly by advertisments, and since advertisers don't like advertising to no-one there was a definite lack of money coming from that corner too.

By the time NABTS, the basic protocal for brodcasting teletext in North America, was introduced the fate of teletext was already sealed. Many smaller stations presisted with Ceefax clones for a some time. CBS and NBC both had rather short lived NABTS based teletext services. They were taken down in the mid-eighties. The price of televisons with Teletext decoders had not fallen enough for people to buy them en mass. That was more or less the end of traditional teletext in Norh America(sorry for not mentioning Canada through out this but on the whole the same applies)

In the mid-ninties teletext had a form of rebirth. Intel launched a televison-based information service. It was brodcast through the VBI but was interactive and shared more blood with modern Digital teletext or even the windows system on which it was based. Even it shut down in the late ninties, usurped by the rise of the internet.

So did the internet kill American teletext? Maybe. But you could also say it raised to levels it never seen before. There are now many different on-line Teletext feeds from around the world, so any teletext starved american has a whole world of text in front of them.

So a happy ending? If I were to be horribly pretenious I might say that it's only right that Ameicas mainly immegrent population should have an immegrent teletext network. Hmm, no thats a pile fo shite. But still. Can't really end this so I think I'll jus taillll ofof df osfsdfg.gs.gd.f

Post some pictures of American text later with a bit of luck.