Demonstrating (and using) Ceefax with BeebEm

This piece of footage comes from ‪@AvroVulcanXH607‬'s Ceefax service, which uses up-to-date information (including TV and even BBC Radio listings!) taken from various sources, including the BBC News website. I highly recommend you check this out. The interactive viewer is available online by going to the Nathan Media Services website and clicking "Ceefax," or by searching "NMS Ceefax" in your search engine. You can also watch his "Pages from Ceefax" live stream.

Yesterday, I demonstrated the service and the many pages it has to offer via BeebEm, the BBC Micro emulator, and this was done by way of Peter Kwan's vbit2 and ZXGuesser's teletext packet server. It's worth noting that BeebEm is not capable of displaying Level 2 or 2.5 teletext pages, so keep that in mind.

Note that the VHS effect was made using NTSC-RS, a Rust port of ntscQT.

(It would've been so awesome back then for teletext to catch on in the United States...)

--- A LITTLE BIT ABOUT CEEFAX --
Launching on the 23rd of September 1974, BBC's Ceefax (a play on "see facts") was the world's first teletext information service. Ceefax ran for 38 years before shutting down for good on the 23rd of October 2012, coinciding with the completion of the digital switchover in Northern Ireland.

At the time of its launch, Ceefax was cutting-edge. The service had several hundred pages at the user's disposal, and were available to those with televisions that were capable of displaying teletext (although the users had to wait patiently for the page to come up). It is, in many respects, considered the precursor to the Internet.

The most recognizable element, however, was "Pages from Ceefax," an in-vision sequence of a selection of pages from Ceefax that was normally shown in the absence of any other programming. These transmissions began in March 1980 and was initially referred to as "Ceefax In-Vision" before changing to the more recognizable name around January 1984. They were shown on BBC One until 9th November 1997 and on BBC Two until 22nd October 2012.

Since its shutdown, efforts have been made to revive Ceefax for the modern age, including Peter Kwan's Teefax and Nathan Dane's recreation of Ceefax.