Talk:Ceefax

What is CLOSE?
According to User:Arbiteroftruth, "Pages from Ceefax" is actually called CLOSE and it's a unique and fantastic service that deserves its own page at "CLOSE".

According to me, Arbiteroftruth is talking nonsense. I wish I knew where the heck this person was getting their information from; it seems like they are zealously defending some secondhand misinterpretation of "closedown" and won't accept that they're wrong. Not (apparently) having ever lived in the UK doesn't necessarily make him/her wrong; but it does seem to increase the probability of secondhand-misinformation.

As for it deserving its own page... well, that's a different argument (I disagree), and I've also discussed that.

Please contribute at Talk:CLOSE.

Fourohfour 11:35, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Pages from Ceefax
Did PFC really stop on BBC One in 1997? I had the impression that the channel would just close down entirely and not show anything, not show Ceefax. Certainly I've seen the last BBC One closedown and the announcer makes no reference to the service, and there's a national anthem and montage at the end, which would be odd if was just followed by Ceefax. BillyH 15:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not entirely sure about that far back, but I have VHS evidence from 2000~2001 showing that BBC1 simply flipped to a simulcast of News24 during what would previously have been the closedown hours. Depending when they actually launched their satellite (and then cable) rolling news channel, it could well be that this habit was started in the late 90s.


 * BBC1 stopped showing Pages from Ceefax when BBC News 24 launched on 9 November 1997. The only exception was BBC1 Scotland which occasionally showed a few minutes of Pages from Ceefax when it had opted out of the main BBC1 network to show Scotland-only programming and there was a small gap to fill before returning to the BBC1 network schedule.(Rillington (talk) 03:00, 15 May 2013 (UTC))


 * As for BBC2, it was still occasionally showing PFC right up to the bitter end of analogue broadcasting. Or at least, it did it for at least a while after I moved into my current abode less than two years ago, as I've seen it shown on the TV I didn't own until then, and this is where I watched the end of analogue transmission happen for the local area. Quite what they show now I'm not sure, it's probably repeats of QI and the like... 87.112.66.153 (talk) 20:37, 14 May 2013 (UTC)


 * As you say, Pages from Ceefax continued on BBC2 until analogue switch-off, the final broadcast was in the early hours of Monday 22 October 2012. BBC2 replaced PFC with a rolling loop of previews of forthcoming programmes.(Rillington (talk) 03:00, 15 May 2013 (UTC))

Beginning of the End?
The Entertainment pages will be slimmed down today. The Gamestation (550), TV Index (520), Film Index (540), and Music Index (530) are being merged into Entertainment Extra (520) and the Have Your Say discussion page (518) has been dropped. They said it's to do with digital - yeah, right! It's cost cutting! They could have added the dropped pages to BBCi and BBC.co.uk instead! Digifiend 09:03, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * BBCi is missing an awful lot of information available on Ceefax - for example, the information about current weather conditions in various cities. 81.158.1.233 (talk) 02:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Pages from Ceefax (again)
Any reason why this section should be completely removed from the article, with some reasoning using Wikipedia policies and procedures rather than having it dismissed as merely some person's obsession with night time TV? I'm not prepared to go into an edit war - if references can be found to establish notability, and its not established enough for its own article, then it needs to be re-established in this article. --tgheretford (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It should be included. Pages from Ceefax was a regular feature of both daytime and night time TV for several years, particularly when the Beeb used to be off air for long periods during the day. Sadly, references are probably going to be hard to find. TheRetroGuy (talk) 22:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the section because it has nothing to do with Ceefax. The BBC broadcast some stuff grabbed from Ceefax to fill time, on another occasion it used to show a potter's wheel and a kitten playing with a ball of string.  We don't write about these facts on the articles about kittens, balls, string, wheels, potters or potter's wheels.  Similarly, we don't write about such BBC fillers pages in the article about Ceefax.  If "Pages from Ceefax" was a feature of BBC television, it should be written about with proper references, in an appropriate article.  What should not happen (and what happened here) is that the article about the service itself--the first ever teletext service--becomes cluttered to the point that nearly 50% of it is about this trivial, unsourced nonsense.  --TS 22:47, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't help thinking that's a bit of a flimsy argument for deleting the section. We shouldn't include Pages from Ceefax here because we don't include the same information on kittens, etc? These other things have nothing to do with the BBC whereas Ceefax is its teletext service. I agree that a section on this subject shouldn't constitute 50% of the article, but it should be mentioned somewhere - either here or in an appropriate article. Perhaps all we need to say is that pages from Ceefax were often broadcast on BBC One and BBC Two when they were off air. TheRetroGuy (talk) 23:16, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * What I find amusing is that ITV Nightscreen has a full article devoted to it, and 4-Tel on View has something whilst there is now nothing, even in this article about Pages From Ceefax (possibly the most famous and well known of the overnight teletext sustaining services). Mind you, one concern I have is that if this is to be reintroduced as an article or as part of this article, some references are going to be have to be found. I'm struggling to be honest to find any references that don't refer to a TV Guide or is from the BBC. Anyone else have any idea? --tgheretford (talk) 19:25, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well no-one is defending the deletion, so I'm going to remove the related tag. Luwilt (talk) 02:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * TS's argument is disingenuous. Ceefax and Pages from Ceefax are pretty obviously closely related, whereas there are countless things related to kittens. It's also a sufficient cultural phenomenon to at least warrant note and some detail, but *not* (IMHO) its own section.
 * That said, I agree that there are limits to what should be included. When I reinstated the section a while back, I trimmed it, but it looks like it's grown some cruft since then. See my comment on subsection removal below. Ubcule (talk) 21:59, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Subsection removed
I've removed the following paragraph:-


 *  Pages from Ceefax was first broadcast at the start of May 1983 although Ceefax AM, shown from 6am until the start of Breakfast Time, had begun a month earlier and other brief 30 minute Ceefax transmissions, billed on air as 'Ceefax in Vision,' and generally broadcast between 8.30 to 9am on BBC1 and 10am to 10.30am on BBC2 with an additional BBC2 transmission in mid-afternoon, had been shown since March 1980. From May 1983 until autumn 1986 Pages from Ceefax was shown on both channels for many hours on weekdays, with BBC2 transmissions during school holidays often running continuously from 9am until around 5.30pm. Weekend Pages from Ceefax transmissions were only broadcast on BBC1 on Sunday mornings during the summer months of 1983, 1984 and 1985 whilst on BBC2 Pages from Ceefax was only seen at the weekend between October and January and over the Easter weekend when the Open University was not being broadcast. The introduction of weekday daytime broadcasting at the end of October 1986 saw the removal of Pages from Ceefax from BBC1 with only the pre-Breakfast Time Ceefax AM slot continuing. On BBC2, Pages from Ceefax was still broadcast until early afternoon during school holidays but daytime transmissions on BBC2 Ceefax transmissions had ended by 1990 with broadcasts during the 1990s restricted to brief breakfast time transmissions before the first programme of the day. 

It's a tedious (and bordering on unreadable) mass of facts masquerading badly as prose. In addition, it partly replaced some earlier text that provided a better overview.

(I really dislike the assumption that simply shoving in facts of random importance to an article, regardless of their readability or usefulness (or their effect on the readability or usability of the article as a whole) automatically adds value. Sometimes it's just self-indulgence).

What worth some of it might have had is lost because it's uncited; also, and we've no idea whether it's a complete list or not, or whether the dates listed are significant or arbitrary.

Left here for reference. Ubcule (talk) 21:59, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Reversion due to bloat (again)
'''I've reverted the current version of the Pages from Ceefax subsection to the 9 June 2011 version, for the same reason that the June 2011 version was created in the first place. The current version is *extremely* bloated, and mostly uncited.''' (See previous discussions above!)

We have to consider whether this bloat is actually useful or informative for the majority of the intended audience, or just anally-retentive, nitpicky detail that does little save to amuse the self-indulgent completism of its more obsessive fans. The final two paragraphs weren't even about Ceefax, but ITV and Ch.4's similar services!

I do not think that the subsection requires what is (trying to be) a near-exhaustive history of every nitpicky detail of Pages from Ceefax- after all, we don't have similar details of 30+ years of every varying schedule detail for other slots, programmes or channels.

Maybe there is a place for this kind of thing (if it was cited, and if it was organised better), but I'm not convinced that it's here.

(Oh, and if you think I'm being deletionist, bear in mind that I was the one that reinstated the subsection after it was deleted- see discussion above- I just don't want to see this turned into a self-indulgent completionism-fest).

Ubcule (talk) 16:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

BBC Report RD 1976/18
Is Report RD 1976/18 of any relevance here, or a red herring? It doesn't seem to contain any reference to teletext. Perhaps it's of some interest in the origins of the term. There's also Report RD 1976/17, which appears to be more directly relevant -- Trevj (talk) 14:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Technical Implementation
Why is there nothing about the technical implementation of ceefax, the protocol, the chipset? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.88.29 (talk) 10:57, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * You can always write something about it. As long as you can find the information referenced somewhere it should be fine. Why not go for it? Paul MacDermott (talk) 11:23, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

History?
I'm afraid I find the opening couple of paragraphs of the "History" section here rather odd... Was the original intent really "to transmit a *printable* page of text during the nocturnal "close-down" period of normal television transmission"?! There are no sources quoted, and a quick google only shows many other pages that look as though they derive from Wikipedia. Can anyone confirm? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:41, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I thought that the original intent was to find a way to transmit subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and it was found that there were a few spare lines within the television picture to transmit additional information and this is how Ceefax was born.{Rillington (talk) 14:14, 18 August 2014 (UTC)}
 * Indeed, this is what I more commonly have seen stated elsewhere. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:07, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm beginning to think it's a long-running hoax. It was added three years ago by User:Barrypyatt, whose deleted autobiography repeated (as admins can see) the same claims. But it all looks very dubious to me. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:16, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Pinging Milowent and Joe Decker in case they're interested, I seem to recall them having something to do with investigating a few hoaxes. Jenks24 (talk) 15:31, 20 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Having read the deleted autobiography, and looked him up on the internet, I don't think this is a hoax in the sense of a deliberate attempt to deceive; but I would suggest the removal of the first five paragraphs under "History" as failing WP:V and WP:NOR - unsourced, and apparently unsourceable, personal reminiscence, and not all that significant in that the system actually adopted was different. JohnCD (talk) 18:02, 20 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the ping! I tend to agree with JohnCD, this looks like the sort of history addition that engineer types like to add to articles about projects they were involved in; I've seen this happen less blatantly in software articles too.  There's no Cameroonian silliness to the story, but I think we need to remove it under WP:V anyway.--Milowent • hasspoken  18:23, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I have removed that whole section, and one illustration relevant only to it. JohnCD (talk) 22:41, 20 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Interesting! thanks for the ping.  :)  Nothing to add to the above yet, but always happy to look at that sort of thing, it's fascinating. --j⚛e deckertalk 01:17, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone, for their responses! :) --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:37, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Control characters
According to the article on Antiope, Ceefax (and similar) was based on fixed 40-character lines. As character data was used to change the mode, like graphics settings, these characters meant some data for that line could not be sent as characters. However, I cannot find a description of what happened in this case. For instance, if I sent the character code to set the color to green, that meant I only had 39 other characters left for the line, so how did the system "stretch out" the 39 remaining characters to fill the line? Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:40, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

The remaining 39 characters were not stretched out. There were 40 cells across the page for each row of text. A cell contained either the display of a printable character or the display of an ordinary text space, or the display of a space if there were a character to change the colour of the text. So if the text of the line were green then the first character of the line would be an Alphanumerics Green character that would be displayed as a space. This method of displaying a control code as a space was useful, as, for example, if one wanted to have one word of that line of otherwise green text to be in, say, yellow, for emphasis, one could do that by changing the text colour to yellow before the emphasised word, then back to green after the emphasised word, and thus the three control characters in that line of text would each be displayed as a space. As words have a space between them anyway, the display on the screen would appear to a viewer to be be a line of mostly green text with one word in yellow. Very cleverly designed. Thus not possible to change the colour of the text within a word without introducing what appears to be a space, but then, changing display style within a word is not usually done anyway - one does not usually have only part of a word in italics or bold in ordinary printed text. Changing colour of text in Ceefax was like using italics in ordinary printed text.

. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:3195:AC01:1094:F0D8:F0FA:E7E0 (talk) 14:16, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

External links modified
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Colin McIntyre was the first Editor of Ceefax
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/may/28/colin-mcintyre — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:3195:AC01:1094:F0D8:F0FA:E7E0 (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Italics
Why are italics used in the titled but not in the first sentence? Which one is correct? Willbb234 17:16, 25 August 2023 (UTC)