Hi all,
For those with a passion for teletext, the advent of DSO brought an end to regular teletext transmissions from the BBC and independent television broadcasters, and that was meant to be that, until there came about the ImoGEN text generator which provides several pages of digital text for out teletext sets to decode and display - Well done Graham.
ImoGEN also has the advantage of providing several testcards as well, but the exact configuration of text pages versus testcards was pretty much an option.
Unfortunately, these units were made in very small numbers, and as far as I am aware, no more have ever been made, nor will be made.. This means that those of us who missed the bus there is little else to use.
Fear not - well, not quite so much.... For those of us who possess SKY satellite receivers, there is an alternative source of 'live' teletext for our ageing goggleboxes... Oh yes! Just turn to channel 410 (British Eurosport).. Eurosport carries a pretty comprehensive text service, but don't expect to find games, quizes, film reviews, stock market results or weather forecasts - it's purely sport, but does at least allow us to exercise the text decoder that lives within some of our older sets, and also includes "Fastext" for those with more modern sets. 
The good news is, you don't even need a SKY subscription, as long as you're happy with silence as a backdrop to your text.. Until fairly recently, channel 317 (TCM) also used to carry a limited service, and if you wanted to, you can still find teletext on at least one Irish channel (RTE), though that requires that you manually search for and store the channel.
I would surmise that there are other channels which may also still carry text, and suffice it to say, I haven't really searched that deep - so far.. At any rate, I can't imagine there only being Eurosport and RTE who still carry text.
Marion
Good tips for finding a source of analogue text Marion 
Coincidently last week I did a little article for the main site on Teletext, it can be found here. It includes some photos of my two early Teletext set top decoders with a G11 receiving text from the IMOGen via a Radofin decoder.
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Hi Marion,
See here for more about Imogen (from post 11)
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10248
Jon
BVWS Member
Teletext is also alive and well on RTE television (Irish). The channels do not show up on a UK Sky box and are encrypted but the teletext is not. To receive teletext Aertel 1,2 (English) and TG1(Galiic) you need to store the channels in the "other channels" menu. To do this go to System setup, then add channels Frequency 10744,
polarity H, SR 22000, FEC 5/6.
Do a channel search then store RTE1,2 and TG1.
The channels will be available in "other channels" menu
The analogue teletext is available via scart and RF output socket. Just press the text button on the TV!
Sorry I did not see Marions last line anyway the above details tells you where RTE is to be found.
I discovered this a couple of years ago : http://www.forum.radios-tv.co.uk/viewto ... 022#p59346
You may need to use an older Sky Digibox. I originally tried it with a Pace BSKYB1000 "minibox" (the small thin one with an external 12V power supply.) That worked, but when I recently tried using a Sky HD DRX595 with an external modulator, it didn't work. The latest Sky boxes do not have built-in modulators, and I suspect they no longer have the circuitry to re-insert the teletext data into the video output. After all, that form of teletext is obsolete in the UK, so Sky might have said let's save a few pence by omitting the teletext inserter.
The old style teletext is still very much alive in other European countries. As seen above, RTE in Ireland use it, as well as Eurosport which is distributed in various European countries. Many other foreign TV stations have teletext. Back in 2010, I had a black and white TV licence which ruled out the possibility of using a TV with built-in teletext, since only colour TVs have ever had that feature. But by chance I was given a generic Samsung digital satellite receiver. I connected it to an old redundant satellite dish left behind on my house. It picked up German TV and teletext! The satellite receiver had a built-in teletext decoder, making me possibly the only black and white TV viewer ever to see teletext but of course, all the pages were in German, so not that useful unless you can read the language 
The IMOGen was a nice piece of kit for the vintage TV enthusiast, but sadly no longer available now and in any case, it was limited to generating a selection of vintage-style teletext pages which could not be updated. The advantage of receiving 'live' teletext from satellite is that the pages are current and the time is correct.
There are other projects for generating teletext, some mentioned here: http://www.forum.radios-tv.co.uk/viewto ... =5&t=10513
Finally, don't forget you can keep teletext alive by recording the video from one of the above mentioned satellite channels on S-VHS . Indeed, if you recorded some tapes on a S-VHS recorder from analogue TV, you can play them back, press the Text button on your TV remote control and view teletext pages from the past. There's a wonderful website which has a gallery of pages saved in this way: http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/
Ordinary VHS video recorders are not high enough quality to get teletext to play back reliably. DVD recorders don't record teletext signals at all; they discard the extra lines.
Ordinary VHS video recorders are not high enough quality to get teletext to play back reliably.
A few did, they recorded the Teletext signal separately. It could also be used to update the clock and program the timer.
I seem to remember a Philips video that could record teletext from it's own decoder!
I have an aged Grundig SVHS recorder, but alas, no SVHS tapes.. It's a restoration project for the future, but is worth working on because it comes with its original remote control/keyboard, and has a whole host of special features, including multiple PinP, caption/text generator, noiseless pause and edit - and goodness knows what else.. The remote control runs to something like 175 keys/buttons spread over three panels (it opens up like a Star Trek style communicator) and a three, or four, line LCD display for text (or at least, I assume that's what it's for!).. 'Tis a fair beast! I'll see about a few pics before long!
A question for those who might know... Would an SVHS recorder operating in VHS mode be likely to record and replay usable Teletext on standard VHS tapes? Or is that only likely to work when using SVHS tapes?
Marion
Would an SVHS recorder operating in VHS mode be likely to record and replay usable Teletext on standard VHS tapes?
No, unless it's one of the very late models which had a quasi-S-VHS recording mode when using standard VHS tapes.
I seem to remember a Philips video that could record teletext from it's own decoder!
I am now sure that the Philips video had full teletext that could be displayed on a non text TV, I am sure it used teletext info for setting recordings. I wish I knew what model it was, I had this machine in the late 80,s.
A question for those who might know... Would an SVHS recorder operating in VHS mode be likely to record and replay usable Teletext on standard VHS tapes? Or is that only likely to work when using SVHS tapes?
The most I have ever managed to get was, over time, something approximating the time and date header which can be useful in itself if trying to date a recording (or these days, the adverts).
Ceefax and Teletext: From Bamboozle to Mega-Zine, 12 reasons they were way better than the internet
I still have the Ferguson S-VHS machine, it's in the shop somewhere. It's well known that these machines can record and playback teletext. Let's find out it can still do that.
Till Eulenspiegel.
I still have the Ferguson S-VHS machine, it's in the shop somewhere. It's well known that these machines can record and playback teletext. Let's find out it can still do that.
Till Eulenspiegel.
Hi Till,
That is one thing I do want to see! How good would it be, to have real time teletext allowing you to randomly view any page, or pages, you like from a recording.. Sadly, I got my Grundig S-VHS a bit too late - by then, there were no S-VHS cassettes available.
Maybe you could corner the market in archived teletext? 
Marion
Hi Marion,
I bought the Ferguson FV39S S-VHS machine in late 1988 along with a Ferguson 51K5 NICAM TV, that's the set with the ICC5 chassis. So it follows many of "S" recordings will well be over twenty-five years old.
The TV is still existence, it's upstairs somewhere above the shop. Even that set could be the subject of a topic someday.
We all know the ICC5 chassis was loved by engineers. One would look forward going to work just to fix sets equipped with that chassis.
Till Eulenspiegel.
We all know the ICC5 chassis was loved by engineers.
Where's that 'tongue in cheek' emoticon when you need it...?!
The reason why I kept mine was to remind me of the good times I had servicing the ICC5. Actually my set never broke down. Honest.
Till Eulenspiegel.
Hi Marion
I wonder if you've checked this site out , it's not full teletext but pages of ceefax with today's news .
www.ceefaxpages.net
Regards.
Gary.
Excellent! Current news and even the date and clock are right!
Now if they would also supply the same info as a pre‐formatted data stream, it would be
reasonably easy to construct a data inserter to display the pages on decoder equipped sets!
1k of RAM holds one page*, so 2k would hold the current page while the next one is updated. Simply swap the input and output RAM as required!
* 24 rows x 40 characters = 960 bytes. each row is preceded by the 2 - byte MRAG (Magazine Row Address Group) = 48 bytes, a total of 1008 bytes.
The Clock run in and framing code comprise a further 3 bytes/row but, being in a fixed format, can be generated separately from the other data.
When all else fails, read the instructions
