that muzak version of "take my breath away" is amazing!

I do remember The Rocky Horror Picture Show being a favourite for sleepovers when I was in school most kids had seen it

I was seriously having the worst day ever but took a break to click on this, and you are so silly this turned it completely around. Thanks for putting so much work into your productions and making us laugh. Keep on Rockin!!

We had more than Ceefax in the UK, that was just the BBC's service. ITV had Oracle and Channel 4 had well, Teletext. It does also have a successor on digital television, which they just call "the red button" after the red button on the remote you need to press to activate it. but it added video and for sporting events, alternate angles and commentary. Was the US version programmed on a BBC Micro too?

@crotchman

8 жыл бұрын

Oh, hey Larry!

@UberLoaf

8 жыл бұрын

+Larry Bundy Jr Interesting seeing you here. Tell Ashens I said what's up.

@KLUTCHdot58

8 жыл бұрын

what he said... Ceefax was interactive when accessed from the remote control. They broadcast the news pages on air after BBC2 closed for the night. Remember that quiz with Bamber, Larry? or did I make that up?

@HarryYack

8 жыл бұрын

+Larry Bundy Jr The Red Button sucks horribly. Bring back the crap graphics and easily cachable pages! Nerr! ;)

@zetametallic

8 жыл бұрын

+KLUTCH58 No you aren't making it up. 'Bamboozle' with quizmaster Bamber Boozle on Oracle was how I spent my Year 11 Tuesday afternoons with a group of schoolfriends. We all hated PE and this was educational of sorts😆. 20 questions with 4 multi choice answers against Mr Boozle. This was 1992 and quite impressive for the time.

Just discovered today that my Betamax recordings can still decode the teletext signals of the time (albeit with a thousand spelling errors) so I can catch up with the weather and traffic reports from 1985.

@walllable

2 жыл бұрын

That's really neat.

@kvzsbt

2 жыл бұрын

I tried this with VHS, but it was a no-go. It would just show garbage.

Funny story, three or four years ago I was channel flipping through an hotel's selection of cable channels. When I got to the community billboard channel I noticed something hilarious. The channel had Windows Task Manager pulled up covering a third of the screen and half of the text on the announcement slides. Stranger still, it was still pulled up when I turned the T.V. on the next morning. I guess somehow the cable company didn't notice or the just didn't care.

I miss Teletext so much. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Ceefax: Not to be confused with Ceephax Acid Crew, the musician who named himself after the BBC teletext service. He's amazing, by the way.

@PhilMante

2 жыл бұрын

Can he play the 2-note song you wrote?

@missbleach8767

2 жыл бұрын

Animaniacs

@missbleach8767

2 жыл бұрын

@@PhilMante Fred Rogers

@PhilMante

2 жыл бұрын

@@missbleach8767 where is tall man? Here I am😁😁😁

For those wondering, Ben had to edit the episode to remove the music used in the opening, it was originally Lahaina Luna that played for anyone interested in knowing what the original track was.

@JMein13074

8 жыл бұрын

+KnightwolfV3 Odd that he had to remove that music and yet the early episodes STILL have "Senses Working Overtime".

@FireStormDel

8 жыл бұрын

JMein13074 That's copyright blocking logic for you.

@kristina80ification

8 жыл бұрын

+JMein13074 It depends on the copyright holder, some understand fair rights usage, some don't.

@vintagevhstreasures4058

7 жыл бұрын

#wheresthefairuse

@bdaddyn678

6 жыл бұрын

JMein13074: I like the song "Senses Working Overtime." That song to me SCREAMS Oddity Archive. 😊😁😀😃😄

If anyone was wondering, the song at 5:14 is called "Carpet of the Sun".

@VicAcid77

5 жыл бұрын

Thank You!

@PieFights

4 жыл бұрын

and at 12:45 if any one was wondering the song is called Didn't we almost have it all by the late great Whitney Houston

Ben, here in Ireland for a brief while between 2007-2009, our Teletext service on one of the channels had a chat room. People could text in messages to each other that would appear on the screen. It shut down after there was some drama about a stalker. I only texted in a few times, but was obsessed with watching the people talk to each other.

Hey Ben. We used to have all kinds of weird stuff in the Chicago suburbs. In the north suburbs, we had a variation of the cable shopping thing, but instead of the keyboard, you dialed in with your phone and used the number pad to select stuff. It worked ok and was around from around 1986 until 1989 or so.

Milk-Fruited Jello would be either Jell-o with evaporated or condensed milk and fruit mixed in as the gelatin's prepared, or the fancy molded version where the condensed milk layer is separate. Since it's a school district I'd imagine they were doing the mixed-in version.

@itzspencerr1403

8 жыл бұрын

Wow, that was drawn out...

@mzaklanc4371

7 жыл бұрын

I never ate a jello. In Slovenia they serve us bread, soup, meat and water for lunch.

@GeoNeilUK

6 жыл бұрын

School dinners in the UK had horrible reputations when I was at school. Let's just say they earned those reputations as they tended to be made of the absolute cheapest food you could buy.

@TheGerkuman

6 жыл бұрын

Nunnayah Beeswax interestingly enough, while evaporated milk jelly (jello) is awful, it works pretty well with yogurt. (Just replace the water with yogurt!)

@luisreyes1963

5 жыл бұрын

Well, so much for the mystery of "milk-fruited Jello". 🍧

Cutting to Berlin was freakin' brilliant! You are like the king of nostalgia!

I feel it's worth pointing out that the interactive, remote control operated version of Ceefax DID in fact happen; it existed for quite a long time in fact, from 1974 until the final BBC terrestrial channels were shut down in 2012. The in-vision Pages From Ceefax on BBC 2 at night were simply pages taken FROM the interactive service and transmitted as an ordinary TV picture to fill up those dead hours. ITV and Channel 4 both also had their own teletext service, which they shared; originally Oracle, but they later lost their licence to a company called... get this... Teletext. Teletext Limited actually still exists and now sells holidays, which is strange.

@TheGerkuman

6 жыл бұрын

The major difference from the initial idea is that they didn't charge a subscription for it. It got built into tv's as standard at a certain point.

Also, this episode is Near & Dear because back in the early 90s, when my mom visited the local bank, they always had their TV's onto the Teletext news channel. Every time i'd go in, and i'd watch the letters come up, and then the dashes run across the screen and the screen would clear and run a new piece of news. It also helped me learn how to read when I was still in the earliest years of school.

I’m a Mac and Windows user. For Mac users the crash screen is actually the Kernel Panic.

@akiraswitchpaw1321

6 жыл бұрын

The mouse pinwheel is a sign of app lockup. Typically.

There is a reverent undercurrent to this channel, an earnestness which feels brave in the sea of bullshit snark that pervades the internet. It's like how church must feel for people who care about God.

@ugiswrong

11 ай бұрын

The hell you on about

I also like that Dolly Parton song, "Hard Candy Christmas". I guess I'm a sucker for melancholic holiday tunes. When I would visit my grown sister in Calgary during the Seventies, I would be utterly glued to (I think) their cable channel 2 whenever it began broadcasting Teledon, a text and graphical info service. That service, to me, was the coolest thing on television. One of the many amazing things about Teledon that held me rapt was how their computers drew high-resolution illustrations (for that time) of all kinds, from mountain landscapes to table decorations. They appeared quickly, bit by bit, as if a virtual artist with an invisible hand was at work. It sketched in guide lines, made some lines bolder and erased unnecessary ones, filled areas in with color, added shadows and highlights, and included flourishes or deleted scrap graphics until the image was finished. Then the relevant text would appear. I was so jealous that our home cable system didn't carry it.

@imrustyokay

3 жыл бұрын

I just like Hard Candy Christmas cause I live in the Same Part of Tennessee that Dolly Parton was born (read: The Knoxville, Sevierville Morrisrown, and Harriman CSA, in Tennessee.) and it basically isn't christmas without it.

13:22 Oh, it gets better, as the Tech was exiting the editing room, tech accidentally bumps the machine back into the edit mode, and it was stuck like that all day! No joke! West Covina's Preview Guide was notorious for it's incompetent staff.

The clip with the Greek music is indeed late 1977, as I checked the Rangers schedule from the 77-78 season, and that game against the Flyers is indeed there.

13:54 we had this at the community cable station i volunteered in, and it ran on an old Atari 8 bit computer, a 130 XE i think

Ceefax *DID* launch as an interactive service in 1974 and continued unitl 2012. In 1976, the BBC and commercial ITV agreed a standard data and signal format which became the world standard. Initial uptake of new TVs with decoders was slow, and without the public service ethos it would never have taken off . The BBC started broadcasting it "in vision" around 1980, a useful promotion for the real service and a good way to fill time with something more interesting than the test card. It wasn't overnight until much, much later. During the 80s and 90s the number of Teletext capable TVs steadily grew, the public funded (BBC) and commercial (ITV/C4) services were popular and sucessful That popularity probably delayed uptake of home internet. From 2000 onwards teletext's popularity waned as people adopted digital TV and the internet.

I just love the teletext that just says: *WHAT'S COOKING*

The current Emergency Alert System stuff is pretty much the closest thing we got to the Teletext legacy😭, well text, font and background wise.

I love your content! just wanted to say when I started watching it I thought it would be creepy odd and not the stuff you cover, I thought since you covered Max Headroom in the first episode it would all be creepy sort of nightmare inducing. Happy for this!

Chicago seemed to be the guinea pig for a lot of this weird technology

Guess even the great Oddity Archive falls victim to the KZread Copyright Police. Anyway, this brings back memories of when Keyfax used to run in wee hours of the night on Chicago's WFLD.

These early Teletext community calendar systems led to some similar technology used by The Weather Channel in the 1980s-90s with their early Weather Star systems. I think that’s an interesting thing to look into if you’re amused by the early teletext stuff. :)

I like the all-Beatles one. That's my kind of teletext

Teletext in the U.K. was interactive,you could even do quizzes,like one called bamboozle!,you didn’t pay for it,you could get subtitles (closed captioning)on page 888,bbc and itv had different names for their services ,itv’s was called oracle

Cablevision (the one which had the teletext played after Rocky Horror) still exists today on Long Island. I think it is also used in NYC and several parts of New Jersey. Channel 10 is now an independent station. Also, you forgot to mention that the showing was long before the first home video release of the film (which was in 1990)!

In use in Ireland to this day, adapted and upgraded to web-quality resolution for freeview boxes.

I remember as a kid staring watching the Prevue Channel in the late 80s and early 90s watching the color changes on the guide.

"What the hell is milk-fruited Jello?"

@seanmichaels8060

6 жыл бұрын

Good question. I never had that for school lunch way back when I was a kid.

@missbleach8767

3 жыл бұрын

🤮

@merules2247

2 жыл бұрын

Peter Griffin time HEHEHEHEHE

Almost two new videos, this must be Christmas. Thanks

I remember as A child they did have channels dedicated to public access that did have teletext announcements which took over when they weren't showing anything.

11:35 coincidentally, i am watching this video on october 16 while eating baked beans

Really thanksful you are to talk about this best childhood remembers, I was very fascinated by these electronic community billboard channel and always been fascinated asking myself what computer is used for it! :)

Fantastic video!!!

Teletext was my childhood...though it was the community service channel. I enjoyed it, when they had the Smooth Jazz radio station playing in the background. Though it was an entertaining thing when the operator had to change the outdated information.

Am I the only one who noticed the clock go down in the intro?

3:37 - this service absolutely did happen, only the remote keypad became infra-red and without a cable. The services, CEEFAX on the BBC and ORACLE / TELETEXT on ITV ran until around 2012.

Thanks for using my re-created Rocky Horror trailer!

Italian teletext "Televideo" by RAI it's still alive... and I love it...

Teletext is alive and well in Finland (on the biggest TV-channels) and in Europe in general, I suppose. And people actually use it, and I don't think there are any plans to discontinue it... To get a fast glimpse of the news headlines, I actually go to the main page of Finnish Broadcasting Company's teletext service ON THE WEB, not on actual television set... You instantly get to know what's going on in the world in a few seconds, I'm yet to find a regular Net portal that can beat that.

Ben, you should do an episode about "what happened to the stations that used to air the static" (hint: most got their licenses revoked or returned to the FCC), or you could do one on early UHF TV stations (about pre-1980).

And to repost a comment that was the original upload. In the UK (and across Europe) there was no need for another decoder as the teletext hardware was built into most TV, they even added something called fastext which is the origin of the four colured buttons on remotes in the UK and Europe (and the Red Button, which would be better if it didn't take all day to start up, old school teletext was immediate) This is because we have an organisation called the EBU who sets standards across Europe (they're also responsible for the Eurovision Song Contest) My question with teletext, OK, I get it, adding in the teletext signal to the MPEG signal would be stupid as the compression would corrupt the signal, but surely the signal could have been broadcast as data which the set top boxes could superimpose on the decoded picture in the correct area in the overscan. Also, we had a Keyfax type service in the UK only called PRESTEL that was based on teletext hardware and a phone line. This was fully interactive and quite expensive and not widely used outside of the financial sector and (oddly) travel agents. The French had a similar service called Minicom that, being French, was not based on teletext but on entirely French technology. It was eve3rywhere in France, largely because the state-owned French telephone company gave away Minicom terminals.

@telocho

3 жыл бұрын

Teletext is coded out-of-band in mpeg or dvb on it's own data stream, not inband with the compresed video. And yes, our digital set top boxes still have teletext. It's still a very polular service in The Nerherlands and in Germany.

@GeoNeilUK

3 жыл бұрын

@@telocho Not in the UK sadly, they killed off their teletext services with the digital switchover. The BBC still has the Red Button which kind of holds onto the legacy of Teletext, but I think they're the only ones, not even ITV or Channel 4 bother.

I used to call teletext "the poor man's internet" I loved it because I didn't have internet access at home.

On a semi-unrelated note, The Weather Channel, on their analog satellites (which shut down back in 2014), broadcasted data on sub-carriers for their Weather Star units, which cable systems could install in order to get The Weather Channel along with the local weather forecasts. In fact, they've been doing that since the 80s. (although not much graphics were shown until the early or mid 90s) Nowadays, in the digital era, this is accomplished by their less fascinating but more technologically advanced IntelliStar systems.

OMG NIGHT-OWL!!!! Growing up in Chicago, my parents thought I was possessed because I weirdly liked watching it because of the various animated owl images... LOL - I think this was an early sign of a budding computer nerd... Yes, I still have my Commodore...

it's still in use in most of the western european countries. here is the online version of the Netherlands. nos.nl/teletekst

I agree that there's just a certain something about old-school cable bulletin boards and program guides that's lacking in today's versions, even if they look sleeker than their earlier counterparts.

+OddityArchive Great video. I remember when there were 36 channels and channel 6 had the teletext. What memories. BTW: Take My Breath Away is by the band, Berlin.

10:38 Actually, Ben, WEVD-FM was broadcast in a variety of languages from 1968 to 1983, I think.

@benjaminmullin96

8 жыл бұрын

+Nicole Richwine According to the wikipedia page, it was mainly Yiddish.

@ChuckD79

3 жыл бұрын

It's now ESPN Radio flagship station WEPN, which took over the frequency in 2003.

Owl TV! Yes! Totally remember this playing in the background when I was a kid.

"Vertical Blanking Interval" IntelliSTAR Video Feeds: PFTT. UNUSED?

Nice Amiga reference at the start of the video!

Syosset Central schools are located here on Long Island. Can't believe they had a keyfax type system. Weird...

There are actual Teletext (speficically ceefax) reunions held in the UK

Only re-editing reason is that the original opening track, Lahaina Luna was removed and replaced with this generic stuff.

I remember growing up in Sacramento, the malls (especially Florin Mall in South Sac) had these interactive kiosks that had a Ceefax-type service. For the life of me, I can't remember its name.

I definitely remember watching our local cable system's teletext channel being edited by somebody who typed SLOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW. When not being edited, it would show a mix of local ads, announcements, current time and temp, and "inspirational" messages.

I know that there was a channel in Russia that broadcasted it's teletext like BBC in 1994 or 1995.

@NetzDotCom

3 жыл бұрын

That might “Pages from Ceefax” like program on some Moscow’s local channel (31 Канал) that was been available only via cable TV. I think that distribution of Teletext in Russia was started in early 2000s and discontinued in January 2021.

@itogi

3 жыл бұрын

@@NetzDotCom Well, channel 31 actually broadcasted teletext like that from 1994 to 2000. I also can confirm, that distribution of Teletext started in the first half of 1990s

555? Wait a minute that's one of those fake numbers DAMN YOU ODDITY ARCHIVE!!!

11:49 Since we mentioned RHPS, we must now mention Meat Loaf. R.I.P.

I'm almost 9 minutes in and I've had no clue what you're talking about but this is entertaining.

@destroyernoah

5 жыл бұрын

Idk what I found hard to keep up with.

Why all the edits? Has George Lucas taken control of the Archive?!

@nicolerichwine5767

8 жыл бұрын

+William DeMarco Music copyright issues.

@alfrankensteinfeldman

8 жыл бұрын

Nicole Richwine Ahhhh...

@itzspencerr1403

8 жыл бұрын

+Nicole Richwine wait, its called format wars

@itzspencerr1403

8 жыл бұрын

+William DeMarco what I can guess of the reason why the audio got so bad is, the company that reported an copyright violation can edit a video to alter the audio how they like it and if they decide to remove the video instead (ESPECIALLY VIACOM) you're able to keep your views on KZread (or equivalent online video service).

hah! Massapequa is right near me, as is Jericho.

@5:45 - CeeFax was actually launched in 1974, not the 80's. We also had more than CeeFax; that being BBC's 'version' of TeleText.

13:25 I have a deep connection to that on duty tech especially when it come to Dolly's music

I always loved these teletext things as it introduced me to some great music and informed me on local events. Too bad you had to re-edit this video for copyright reasons.

Teletext is still a big thing here, alll the day you can browse news and weather etc. aslong as you tell the TV to show you the telext. You can even access it online if you wish to do so, and it looks excatly the same as the TV one.

TV: Try Jesus Ben: He was delicious

What is a cheese salad?

@merules2247

2 жыл бұрын

What??!! You do not know what cheese salad is I LOVE CHEESE SALAD!!!

I've never used an Amiga but do guru meditations overlap things like what the guide was doing? Seems strange a video'd still be on the channel in the same area as the error but some things overlap the error message so it must be multiple transparent layers...

God I miss Teletext...

Key fax was first to do things that are considered the every day norm now during this pandemic situation. Milk fruited jello I got more commonly in the early 80’s. It’s like jello made with milk not water with pieces of fruit in it. Haven’t seen it for at least 35 years really

13:26 Wow, as I watched this, Rolling Stones was on my radio.

@13:40; I watched as someone, over the air, was writing up different screens on one channel.

Still in use in Noway to, peak year was 2005

So the only edit was the opening song change, and nothing else was removed?

9:11 We don't have that on Television. But we do have some thing like it on the radio WRCI FM 97.1

Ben, I would pay good money (probably 19.95) for your smooth jazz. love ya dude (platonic)

13:30 As someone from the Covina area, sounds about right for the people here

No no, Ceefax (and other such services for other channels, including a couple odds and ends here in the US) actually *did* pan out. That was what ended in 2012 when analog died.

@telocho

3 жыл бұрын

DVB-T and DVB-C (I don't know of ATSC) do supports teletext in a separate data stream.

Was the original taken down?

I'd rather watch Nite Owl than most infomercials. Notice I said *most.* Some are totally awesome. With all that said I love these old teletext broadcasts. Something about them reflects a yearning towards communication by any means necessary or available, what Chaplin spoke of in his Great Dictator speech. Didn't we almost have it all, when love was all we had worth giving?

Ceefax closed in October 2012, yes, but only due to analog shutdown. It was replaced by the BBC Red Button digital teletext service. There was also the interactive Prestel system created by the Royal Mail - basically like a giant BBS, with thousands of pages where you could buy stuff, chat etc. In fact, france implemented Prestel as Minitel and it took off, mostly due to government support - there were 10 million monthly connections...IN 2009. Minitel launched in 1978 and closed down a few months before Ceefax, in June 2012. MInitel was so popular there was no less than 26,000 different services - you could chat, get a prostitute, shop online...

where did all this EPG channels go?

Hey, but Guru Meditation looked differently xD I mean one at the start

I doubt anyone would remember by now, but does anyone remember the music originally used in the intro bit? It was some kinda tropical sounding piece, and I forgot to write down the name of it from the credits.

@devorezz

8 жыл бұрын

+Prince of the Iron Fist Lahaina Luna by Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg Sucks that after all this time, the original has to be removed.

@SonicYM2612

8 жыл бұрын

+devorezz Yet the music can be found with no problem on KZread. They really don't have much of a grip over their content ID system it seems....

I thought the CEEFAX computer had been decommissioned in 2012 and then I found this pagesfromceefax.net/ which seems to be up-to-date, is it an interpretation of the app?

Very informative. HOwever it does not resembe the teletext I experienced in Holland. The remote control was all we needed and teketext more resembled an early version of te internet. Nor do I remember my father having to pay for teletext. You just hit the teletext button which was integrated in theremote control of your television, punch in the the number of teh page you wanted to see and there it was.

That guy at 14:00 was already enjoying Christmas it seems.

LOL! The Learning Channel!

Anyone else remember when Lahaina Luna was the opening theme?

TBH I've got so many dongles and cables and accessories for the TV right now that I'm in danger of that pile in the video. In fact if all my add-ons were that size that would be my living room. The bedroom would be worse...

14:53 The Pinwheel of Doom is looks slightly similar to the logo of the german TV channel, SAT.1

I recall a channel that was on an old TV cable program my family used to have. It was channel 12 and late at night it had a classical music block and in the daytime it was talking about scientific stuff. And it had text on the screen. Is this technically textile TV?

@stephanietrim3094

8 жыл бұрын

*teletext

@stephanietrim3094

8 жыл бұрын

MaxxFordham Sorry.

@stephanietrim3094

8 жыл бұрын

Ok