A Brief History - Ceefax 

As of 2022, it’s still going strong in The Netherlands. Not only did it survive the digital switchover, it is also available via internet and an app. The simplicity obviously still has appeal.

I really like the way Teletext handled the whole shutdown situation. It was melancholy, but beautiful.

Those were the days. When you couldn’t sleep so instead decided to switch on BBC Two and look at Ceefax

I was born in 1976, my sister in 1979. We were inveterate TV viewers and when BBC 2 did "pages from Ceefax" we used to watch it, quite hypnotised (even when they repeated the pages) until Blue Peter, Grange Hill, or Jossy's Giants came on. My mum also used to love it for the cricket score.

Watching the football scores update was always amazing. I think it was the having to wait for it to flick through 3 other pages to get back to your game that made the experience so intense, always seemed like a lifetime...and bamboozle on 4 was magical.

I wonder if page 404 on 4Tel ever said "not found"

I'm only 13 and I still used Ceefax in 2009 or 2010 as a young child. That's truly a testament to the staying power of teletext technology.

This is a brilliant tribute to a system that marked generations. As a non-british, the way you told the story made me tear up a little. Here in Portugal, teletext resisted through the digital transition and still provides information, but in a very small scale...

In Ireland we had our own "Aertel" service which pretty much was Irish Ceefax which itself went down during the digital flip in the early 2010s. man i remember for no reason at time just hopping on to see weather forecasts, random articles and anything else that caught the eye. it didn't get the sendoff Ceefax got but still a strong memory in the history of analog television. simple fun times

I love this. In the States we adopted this service and called it Keyfax, aka Nite Owl. I would stay up all night watching it.

Ceefax and Oracle were actually a major breakthrough in the history of information. The system was the first near-instantaneous delivery of on demand news. I sometimes find it a bit annoying how it is often mocked today. Things moved on, the technology and relevance eventually became antiquated, it served its purpose and came to a natural end. But it was no joke at all, back in the day. It was a very important service.

0:41 “You’re too slow!” - Sanic Teh Hegdehag

Australia's variant was called AusText, but in our household we just called it Teletext. Thet had a kids section with things like jokes, fun facts, and greetings. For a bunch of years when I was a kid, mum and dad would call up AusText and get a birthday greeting put in on my birthday. It was so much fun waking up, turning on the TV and seeing a full-page illustration of a beach or a party hat or something, with my name there, and "with love from [my brother], mum, dad and [the family cat]" printed in uppercase, blinking, blocky letters. Thanks for making this video, it was a nostalgia trip seeing those graphics again, after having not seen them for decades.

Don't be sad because ceefax ended! Smile because ceefax happened :)

Nice nostalgic tunes intro mate.

Here in Hungary, still a few channels are having operating teletext on analog cable television and on the digital transmission as well! 😊 At least five channels are sharing the same teletext and two other channels has its own one. The page numbering goes from 100 up to 999 and each page can have a few "sub-pages" which are auto-switched in a time interval (½-1 min).

Must Admit, when they played Bart by Ruby I cried a touch.... As somone who restores Vintage TV's, Ceefax is somthing special. Luckilly I still have the Betamax Tapes I recorded of it in 2011 :)

how did you make me cry about an obsolete british teletext system that ive literally never heard of before now

Brilliant thanks Adam. I loved CeeFax and also the Irish version, Aertel on RTE television. There was tons of info on it, if you could wait for Page 2 out of 16 to come back around.

Irish version was called Aertel, finally got axed in 2019 but I hadn’t used it since 2008/9, basically when I got an iPhone

I remember Ceefax fondly. We used to watch it on a blocky TV in our holiday caravan! 💗

They still do it to this day with ITV Night screen.

I live in Hungary. We still have teletext 3 teletext services (on tv2, RTL klub and the MTVA channels)

I did a small tribute to Ceefax for ARD Text in Germany a couple of years ago. In full teletext and everything, of course!

Oracle didn't rename Teletext, It lost its franchise to Teletext in the 1991 Franchise Round.

I remember the funky music they played with Ceefax in vision and was featured in the guilty pleasure segment more recently on my local radio station

It is still going in Poland, with the name "Telegazeta". I just look at it from time to time.

I am 12 years old but I used to wake up at 4 in the morning just for ceefax . We will miss you

Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:00 Part 1 - The Beginning 4:40 Part 2 - The Rise 8:27 Part 3 - The Battle 11:00 Part 4 - The Fall 15:32 Part 5: The Comeback 18:06 Outro That’s all the timestamps.

I was 12 when Ceefax closed. It still felt like losing an old friend. I used it constantly when I was bored, or when I wanted to find out football results before Match Of The Day came on.

I remember way back when I'd use teletext to play the teletext quiz show Bamboozled pratically everyday and my mum would help with some of the questions I had no idea.

Another enlightening presentation Adam! As a Doctor Who fan I have seen comments about Ceefax on some of the DVD extras, but this actually explains it better than I could have thought.

Good old days, thankyou for bringing them back for a short while.

09:43 I never thought I'd hear or see '4T The Dog' ever again. It was badass and part of my childhood waiting every week for the next episode. I even sent off to Ch4 for a 4T the dog mug. It was one of those heat ones where 4T the Dog was wondering where his little pal dog was 'Wiggly' and when you put hot water in it the telly screen would melt away and Wiggly would be on the telly saying "Tee Hee". I wish I had realised not to put it in the Dishwasher.

When I visited family in the UK in the early 2000s, I used ceefax so I wouldn't rack up telecom charges for the privative dial up internet. I got the same info, so I only log in to check email and then get off the net. I miss having that ability now, it was the real "smart tv" and there was no tracking outside of the info you called up.

Watching this reminds me of Australia's Teletext Service, Austext. It was put to sleep in September 2009, but I fondly remember watching it throughout the early to mid 2000s, getting news updates, and seeing birthday messages on the screen, and so many other features which I got through the TV, which blew my mind, even though we had dial-up internet way back then. Weirdly enough, this text service was only fully functional on one of the commercial channels, while our public broadcaster only presented the closed captions. It's sad to think that we never got a Red Button-type datacast service on our digital TV. Apparently studies suggested that it wouldn't have been feasible, likely because barely anyone had been using Austext, and by the time it shut down, pretty much everybody got their news and information through Facebook and other websites anyways. Japan, on the other hand, maintains datacasting on their TV, and all the terrestrial channels (flagships and affiliates) have their own version of datacasting (if you want to, and if you can, look up ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-D4agueTdUz0.html; the focus is on reception from multiple prefectures, but it does include examples of datacasting on each channel). It's intriguing to see the levels of forward thinking Japan has applied to their technological services. In fact, Japan is probably the only country I can think of where datacasting is actually promoted a lot. For example, instead of needing a telephone number or an SMS number, viewers can use the datacast service to vote for their favourite contestants right then and there, live as the show is happening (look up "karaoke battle" or カラオケバトル as an example). As for me, teletext has a special place in my heart too, but now that it's been gone for eleven years without a replacement, I'm not sure that I'm missing much. Information is in the palm of my hand on my phone, and the interactivity I have with the news on Facebook suffices. Still, I would love something on TV that doesn't require internet, that has all the information I want, when I want it. Oh well.

It was somewhat amusing that when the BBC ran out of things to broadcast in the early hours of the morning then they would just broadcast screens from ceefax on the main TV channels

I do miss Ceefax.

For many of us who were born in early 1970's , we had to wait till 90's to update our TV's for teletext, one thing enjoyed was checking Pop Charts after listening to Radio 1 countdown

Wow as a kid living in the 70’s & 80’s those were the days I missed out with teletext. But I did get to watch those public channels especially bbc thru out the years

I remember my Dad using Ceefax and Teletext in the 90s in order to check train timetables and verify TV schedules, as they could often change at the drop of a hat for whatever reason. Other than that though, I felt this system was absolutely piss poor. I was a young child but I hated the interface and didn't understand how it was meant to work. I even wondered if the stuff I was reading on it was accurate half of the time. No wonder I was an early internet adopter... (1995 baby!)

Absolutely love this video and massively underrated!! Keep this up!!

888-subtitles BBC-101 quick index, 199 a-z index. I forget the rest there were so many, 300,600. But I'll never forget Digitiser. It was a great games review section. If you had a better TV you got options like 'reveal' or 'show', 'forward', 'back'and 'hold'. The last three were great. Each page could have a few subpages within which cycled at around a 2 minutes per page. Which meant say 601 had 1/10 pages. If you didn't finish reading page 2 you had a good 18 minute wait for it to roll around. There was also quick pages indicated by 4 colours. You needed this if you wanted to play any quiz or game pages. Another function was +&-. Whereas forward and back controlled the sub pages, +&- went up and down on the main pages. Every remote had reveal, the rest mentioned depended on your TV. This was a great service, ch4 had some really well done quizzes. PS, anyone search around for hidden pages? I most I got were glitched or text pages. Digitiser had the most hidden stuff, mostly images but sometimes full paragraphs. You really needed to press reveal on every page in that section.

in hungary teletext is still alive, but almost nobody knows that it exists. Last year when we were at a hotel and i called up the teletext on the TV for lake water tempertues my roomates were blown away (we were 14 when the story took place and it was last year)

I was born in 2012 so I sadly didn't grow up on ceefax

Another excellent vlog mate. Loved Ceefax especially for the football scores.

My mum used to have Ceefax and she said her mum was on it all day! I did have Ceefax in my life but for a short while ;) Guess Ceefax isn't returning..

Thank you! I was looking for a video like this! I used teletex for just 1 year before the digital signal kicked in, it's was good, especially if you haven't an internet connection.

I did use Ceefax but I was more an Oracle then from 1993 Teletext guy I accessed news sections until my newspaper was delivered

It's SO sad that Ceefax had to shut down... Here in the Netherlands, the Teletext service of its public broadcaster is still very much up and running...!

I remember this as a young child my dad always goes on Ceefax. Good times

Still one of my favorites of yours.

Yeah, I had absolutely no idea what Teletext is or it's purpose. I'm from the US, so we never had that over here to my knowledge. That being said, incredible and informative video as always, just subbed with notifs!

Adam!!! I stumbled upon your channel and immediately fell in love! I’m an Anglophile from smack dab in the middle of the USA in St. Louis, Missouri. I have always been fascinated by and in love with British television and it’s entire history. To me it’s always felt like a step above American TV, a higher class if you will. I love all your videos about British TV history like the black and white change for ITV and it’s 1979 strike. Nothing that bold has ever happened in the states like a nationwide station strike. British history is endlessly fascinating and you make it so enjoyable to learn all about it!

A 'ceefacts in vision' like service is still a thing in the Netherlands. Reletext messages are regularly broadcast on dutch public television Often there is between programs in which there is too much time for commercials but too little time for a new program.

This is a sad story the end of ceefax, just like windows messenger

While I was watching TV my dad or brother would go, just need to check football results. I'm like I was watching that

i still find it odd that my new £700 HD TV comes with an option for analog tv and teletext..i mean it does not work but if you press the txt button it works lol..all you see is a black screen and 100 on the top right hand side of the screen.lol unless they left it in for stuff that runs on the old analog signal like old games consoles and stuff.

I hope BBC revives Ceefax for its 50th anniversary in 2024.

You should do a brief history on Tracy Beaker

I can remember doing a limited form of online banking through teletext. Basically you went to a specific page and from there dialled up your bank. After authenticating it basically redirected the page and you could see your account details. I can’t remember if it was the cooperative or nationwide. I tried to find some online information but you can imagine searching teletext telephone banking pulls up lots of modern pages. The other thing was the page it jumped to was not a normal three digit page, this may have been to try to stop people snooping. If anyone has info or remembers this let me know, and no it was not Prestel I had used this in the past. This was definitely by TV

I spent a couple of weeks in Birmingham in 1981 making pages for viewdata/ceefax/prestel for National Express Coaches information and semi booking system. We had a school visit to the science museum in the 1970s and the Ceefax was on Demonstration , quite popular.

I'm in the US and my family first got cable in 1972, roughly quadrupling the number of available stations. If we had a service like this at the time, my TV viewing would have gone from 20 hours a day to 30.

Thank you of course for this Adam so then too. The best time in a way for Ceefax not only on tv sets but when of course it was in vision on BBC1 or BBC2. Back in the 1980s, particularly from around May 1983 when it replaced Test Cards F or G; until October 1986 or so when daytime tv started up. And as others have put too, on BBC2 in the 1990s and then 2000s when it was shown in the am hours overnight then too. BBC1 of course by then was showing News 24 so did not have Ceefax on any more by then so too. But as others have said too, it all came to an end alas really in October 2012 when the digital signal came in as the analogue one was turned off so then too. Well done of course too!

It has been 10 years now…and 5 years since this video was uploaded!

14:30 Analog television has seen many technological advances and additions since the days of Baird and Marconi. From 405 line black and whites to 625 line color, the introduction of Ceefax, the world’s first teletext system, and Maican Stereo to name just a few. The move to digital television will allow technology to advance still further providing even more services. And so, from tomorrow morning BBC 1 Northern Ireland will be available in high definition on freeview, satellite, and cable. Now though we enter a new era of broadcasting as this becomes the fully digital UK. From the analog BBC television service, goodnight and goodbye. 🤘🏻🙌🏻👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

idk why but the shutdown of Ceefax made me emotional, I didn't get to properly grow up with it but yeah

I remember the pixel art style that they used

Someone should revive Ceefax for digital TV

So that's why Ceefax was the 1st time before the internet was born

Here in New Zealand, it was simply called Teletext.

It also pre-dated rolling news channels

We had CEEFAX through Channel 7 in Australia... but no one missed it when it went... it shows the cultural differences between the UK and Australia in how people in the UK can be sentimental for such as service that no one in Australia cared much for....

I used to use it. I think it was faster and more efficient than some people give it credit for. The fact that it was on the TV and could be easily used at any time was great. I used it here and there for TV guides, sports results etc. Also there was a lot of kids programming on it that I used to like going through when I was bored.

At one time we’d watch the neighbouring regions’ transmissions which once I’d fitted the correct band Ariel was an extra choice of viewing and gave us news of events more than 25 miles westwards but the 54 mile signal had its moments - especially for Teletext. The first time I saw the text from the weaker signal I actually thought the strange icons and symbols were an alien message ! Hieroglyphs galore ....🙄Very Enjoyable, Regards from new forest

I remember looking at BTCC results on it at 3 in the morning because it wasn’t live back then, and I would’ve had to wait till Grandstand was showing to see what happened

0:40 As a sonic fan that made me piss myself with laughter

As I recall back in the 1980syou had to buy a Ceefax enabled TV to be able to get it as it didn't come as standard. By the 1990s most new TV's started to receive it as a standard. And wasn't there something called Prestel which was similar to Ceefax but it was a subscription service offered by the post office?

A good example of the difference of how things were done in Britain and the US. This kind of bulletin board service was allowed to develop organically in the US compared to it being a government program in the Britain. The only reason this concept worked at all was BBC 1 and 2 generally only had a normal TV broadcasting schedule from 5:30 pm to about midnight, so there were large blocks of time that Ceefax could fill up. Almost no stations in the US had no daytime programming by 1984, and many stations were showing programs 24 hours a day. It wasn't possible to run a Ceefax type service on US TV, but that caused to a much faster growth of computers in the US to access bulletin board systems for those who wanted the content. As programs like Gopher and newsgroups proliferated, it was the launch of the Mosaic browser in 1993 that allowed the world wide web to grow into what we know today. Ironically, it was a Brit, Tim Berners-Lee, that's generally credited with the idea of a world wide web of hyperlinks that allowed users to travel easily from one site to another. Ceefax was forward looking idea of information on demand, but it was the Beeb's limited program schedule that allowed it to work.

Germany also still seems to have Teletext even post-digital switchover. Of course, our service was introduced in the 1980s and therefore later than Ceefax.

Will you be doing a brief history of Countdown?

I loved Park Avenue the soap on Oracle and on Teletext there was a TV talking point page which is now a Facebook group

RIP Ceefax 1974 2012

Pages from Ceefax can be improved like how the weather channel own intellistar system works. we might still have it to this day if they do it.

I remember looking up football results, Cinema times, even WWF results too.

Teletext was my pre-internet and the first thing I read when I got up, bleary eyed, every morning. I remember: Bamboozle!, Digitiser, Planet Sound, the annual Advent Calendar. Much preferred Channel 4's output, as it was a bit more sarcastic and targeted at 'the kids'. I also read the boring regular news and there was a showbiz gossip page somewhere. Probably. Having a fast text telly made the process a bit less painful, still remember the numbers counting up to the page you wanted...sometimes it would take a while. As I shared a bedroom with my sister, if she pee-ed me off I'd hide the remote (it was 'my' telly anyway). Har har.

Page 198 or 298 - standard carousel of pages.

Good video You should do a video about itv nightscreen.

10:00 - I wonder if that's where the classic 404 error on web pages comes from? No index found. I've been US all my life. I'd heard of Ceefax, but none of the competitors. This was neat. Thanks for making this video. (Even I didn't see if for 5 years lololol.)

Luckily in Italy Televideo and Mediavideo are still on air But they aren't as fun as Ceefax Unfortunately La7video has been shut down in 2014

Interesting video, Ceefax used the missing lines at the top of the screen to encode the binary to display the characters and pages. I used to watch page 198 in the mornings before going to school, a part of my life? I think not. Do I miss it? No, not that we have the internet. Wonder how they could implement facebook on Ceefax?

It's impressive that Ceefax lasted as long as it did to be honest

Sick start up

In the uk they have nightscreen but on ITV not bbc

You should do one on ITV Nightscreen!

Crefix/Ceefay/Ceefux and Oraclu - especially if you watched on an indoor aerial!

What's the music in the intro? For some reason I thought it was Mr. Vain by Culture Beat but it doesn't have that arpeggio synth lead. I know it's another early 90's dance tune though, just can't place it!

There is an app you can download from the play store and app store that lets you make your own ceefax style pages the app is called teletext fake.

You got me, feel much sad 😞

And as of 2023, RTP 1, RTP 2, SIC AND TVI Still have teletext in portugal