Date   : Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:23:33 +0100
From   : robert@... (Rob)
Subject: Fw: Fwd: ITV Teletext to shut down in January

>
> I think it's more that the broadcasters don't want to devote the
> manpower to producing content in what they perceive (not entirely
> unjustly) as an obsolescent format.

Close ... the report I read about Teletext (the company who do ITV's
teletext) said they were closing because it was on longer profitable -
I imagine they get most of their revenue from advertising, and if
fewer and fewer people are using it, they'll not get the revenue in.

With the BBC, I'm sure it is more that technology has moved on..

>
> Technologically speaking I imagine it would be possible to produce a
> reasonable facsimile of a teletext display using MHEG if the content was
> there, but once the analogue signal is switched off (and hence there are
> no "legacy" teletext receivers to worry about), the people generating
> the content presumably won't want to be constrained by the 40x24 format
> anymore.

I can't say I'm impresed by MHEG and digital text services in general.
 They are slow and clumbersome and I've yet to find anything usefull
on them.  Analoge teletext, particularly in modern TVs with Fastext
and big caches, was quick and easy to use.

As far as capturing the data now goes ... do any of the client/server
applications out there for sharing teletext on an econet cache the
pages?

Certainly somebody should ask if it's possible to get a dump of the data ..

Rob