teletext biting the dust?

J G Miller wrote:
On Sun, 02 Aug 2009 09:55:18 +0100, Mark Carver wrote:

but what the New Media Jizzwnaks that run everything now don't understand
is that not everybody is tooled up, or even wants to be tooled up for the
internet.

It is not that they do not understand, it is that they just do not care [that
some people are not Internet connected].

Perhaps yes. Utterly disgusting that they fail to acknowledge that one out of
three UK homes do not have the internet. These are the same types of course
who can't survive even a few seconds without surfing the web or sending a mail
via their Blackberrys and i-Phones. I wonder what made them like that ?

The BBC lost any component it had of caring during the Birt [knighted and given
a peerage for his abuses to broadcasting] era.

Agreed.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

On Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:19:54 +0100, Charles wrote:

However, Virgin Cable (and NTL before them) have said there is no
possibility of their ever providing a service to our village

Cabling of remote locations is never going to be economically viable,
which is why there is WiMax (wide area WiFi).

http://computer.howstuffworks.COM/wimax.htm

charles wrote:

I don't disagree about the use of co-ax or even fibre optics for
distribution. However, Virgin Cable (and NTL before them) have said there
is no possibility of their ever providing a service to our village -

No just villages, suburbs too. There's no hope that our housing estate, just
three miles from the town centre, will ever be covered by Virgin.

However, there's a glimmer of hope from BT now, who have announced our estate
will be provided with 'Fibre to Street Cabinets' in Phase 1 of the national
roll out.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4...net-pilot.html

However, it's never going to be economic to do rural areas with anything other
than radio based systems.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

In article , Kennedy McEwen
wrote:


It takes about 2 minutes for my bloatware Windows XP machine to boot up
with Internet Explorer's home page set to the BBC News site. And that
is a 2.8GHz machine with oodles of RAM and disc space for video editing.
By contrast, I can *READ* 9 or 10 Teletext pages on my TV in the time
the PC takes to give me an Internet choice. That is information,
productivity in Microsoft speak, obtained in the time it takes Gates and
Co. just to wake up their bleary eyes! Of course, it isn't counted in
the advertisements for Vista or 7.

The above made me curious so I just went and checked.

A machine I have runs Ubuntu 9.04. Uses a 1.73GHz Pentium M. 1Gig of RAM.

From pressing the powerup button to getting the desktop took 38 seconds.
Then took one second more for me to start my preferred 'ROX' desktop and
apps. Then took another 6 seconds to start FireFox, and get it to show me
the main BBC Radio iPlayer page ready for me to select what I might want to
listen to.

So about 45 seconds from cold start to usable BBC webpage. Admittedly I did
press 'return' during the bootup when it gave me up to ten seconds to
choose a different OS. So if I'd not been beside the machine it would have
taken up to 10 seconds longer.

As a comparison my RISC OS box takes about 24 seconds from pressing the
startup button to having a fuctional desktop. And the CPU in that is
clocked well below 1GHz.

When will people, politicians and authorities, understand that a
selection of **** is not choice!

Not clear from the above if you are referring to using Windows or
teletext vanishing, or that the BBC news page is a PITA to load. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"Max Demian" wrote in message
...
"Terry Casey" wrote in message
om...
[...]

Meanwhile, BT decided, at long last, that it would be a good idea to
register ViewData as a trade mark ...

... it was pointed out to them that they wished to register the name
ViewData for a system that allowed users to view data. Nobody is allowed
to register a trademark under such circumstances - anybody can use those
words and it becomes, therefore, a generic term.

So BT came up with a new name - Prestel - and the whole thing was a
flop, anyway!

Cf Minitel (from Wikipedia):

"Minitel was a joint development between France Télécom and British
Telecom, prior to its privatisation. A similar service was delivered by
British Telecom to UK subscribers under the name of Prestel, but was
charged by the page rather than time. Although the UK service enjoyed some
early success, changes to the way it was charged made by the
post-privatised British Telecom, as well as the universal availability of
the free teletext service, saw its complete demise."
Max Demian

Big difference was the French got Minitel included as a substitute for phone
books.

Prestel equipment had to be bought, I had a Commodore 64 with a Prestel
/ Compunet modem, fun while it lasted.

Steve Terry

In article ,
Steve Terry wrote:

Prestel equipment had to be bought, I had a Commodore 64 with a Prestel
/ Compunet modem, fun while it lasted.

I used my BBC Micro with a Pace modem. My Bank had a Prestel facility for
home control of payments, etc. When BT gave up the system the Bank had its
own private network with local access points. That closed in 2004 and
internet banking took over.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.11

Brian Gaff wrote:
Is it true, as someone just said to me in passing, that most non commercial
teletext will be gone by the end of the year.

I know they should have retained the old system, Have you found anyone with
a good word to say about the current half screen half baked system?
Brian

Well, there goes my only reason for watching ITV!

In article , Jim Lesurf wrote:
It takes about 2 minutes for my bloatware Windows XP machine to boot up
with Internet Explorer's home page set to the BBC News site. And that
is a 2.8GHz machine with oodles of RAM and disc space for video editing.
By contrast, I can *READ* 9 or 10 Teletext pages on my TV in the time
the PC takes to give me an Internet choice. That is information,
productivity in Microsoft speak, obtained in the time it takes Gates and
Co. just to wake up their bleary eyes! Of course, it isn't counted in
the advertisements for Vista or 7.

The above made me curious so I just went and checked.

A machine I have runs Ubuntu 9.04. Uses a 1.73GHz Pentium M. 1Gig of RAM.

From pressing the powerup button to getting the desktop took 38 seconds.
Then took one second more for me to start my preferred 'ROX' desktop and
apps. Then took another 6 seconds to start FireFox, and get it to show me
the main BBC Radio iPlayer page ready for me to select what I might want to
listen to.

I've found Ubuntu to be the most user-friendly version of Linux that I've
tried yet, and currently have it installed on three machines. One dual-boots
with Vista, one with the trial version of Windows 7, and one on a netbook
with XP. Without even needing to do any timings, it's clear that in every
case Ubuntu is a lot quicker to load than Windows on the same machine.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

In article , Peter Duncanson
writes
On Sun, 2 Aug 2009 02:49:02 +0100, Kennedy McEwen
wrote:

In article , Peter Duncanson
writes
It is a generic term but the BBC does not use it.

They damn well do! In all of there patent and legal documentation.

Er, yes. As viewer I haven't had any need to read that stuff.

Some years ago I designed and built a "teletext" decoder for my TV
followed some time later by a much more advanced 1k-page decoder (almost
the entire service in one cycle thanks to 1MB DRAM, excluding the
sub-pages which are broadcast in sequence so took a bit longer) for the
PC. Almost all of the test functions for the relevant chipsets are based
on BBC CEEFAX examples, so it isn't just the legal stuff.

What the BBC brand name for teletext, or MHEG in the digital domain,
doesn't change what the generic facility is called and the BBC have to
adhere to that if they want chipset, STB and TV designers to support
their brand.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

In article en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart wrote:
In article , Jim Lesurf wrote:
It takes about 2 minutes for my bloatware Windows XP machine to boot
up with Internet Explorer's home page set to the BBC News site.

The above made me curious so I just went and checked.

A machine I have runs Ubuntu 9.04. Uses a 1.73GHz Pentium M. 1Gig of
RAM.

From pressing the powerup button to getting the desktop took 38
seconds. Then took one second more for me to start my preferred 'ROX'
desktop and apps. Then took another 6 seconds to start FireFox, and
get it to show me the main BBC Radio iPlayer page ready for me to
select what I might want to listen to.

I've found Ubuntu to be the most user-friendly version of Linux that
I've tried yet, and currently have it installed on three machines.

My experience is similar. I'd not tried Linux for a few years, but gave it
a go when I decided I wanted to access the BBC iPlayer and do a few other
audio-related things. I decided that Ubuntu (and Xubuntu) are far more user
friendly than the distros I tried some years ago. They also have made good
progress with the everyday things people want like being able to use the
iPlayer or playback various audio files just by using desktop applications.

In many ways I feel a 'newbie' with Linux as the Gnome desktop, etc, have
developed a lot since I last tried Linux. Much the same at command line
level, but with a new user-friendly desktop. Also easy to install. I think
that the Ubuntu people have done an excellent job.

Looking in places like W H Smiths I've noted the appearance of a number of
magazines that are devoted to people trying/adopting Ubuntu. Makes me
wonder how many people are now going to give it a try. After all, if people
are now presented with having to pay to change from XP to 'new' versions of
Windows, but you can try Ubuntu out, why not give it a go?

I'm not in a strong position to comment as I haven't used Windows much. But
I've read comments by others who have, discussing problems like the
possible need to buy a new computer, and other new hardware, just to be
able to run the 'new' versions of Windows. So the cost of upgrading may be
high, and end up with more landfill. So again, I wonder if people are now
going to try Ubuntu and find it is OK, and works with the current hardware.

Particularly interesting if people try out a 'live' install so they don't
have to actually change anything on the hard disc. If you don't like it,
throw the live CD away, bootup, and back to what you had.

One dual-boots with Vista, one with the trial version of Windows 7, and
one on a netbook with XP. Without even needing to do any timings, it's
clear that in every case Ubuntu is a lot quicker to load than Windows on
the same machine.

I have Ubuntu 9.04 on the machine I use as part of my main audio system.
Currently have it dual-booted with an older version. Will probably replace
that with something else for experiment in due course.

Also have an ancient laptop on which I've installed Xubuntu. I do prefer
the Xubunu desktop windowing (Xfce4) as it is more like the window
evironments of ages past that I was familiar with back then. Currently in
the process of changing the Ubuntu system's desktop to being ROX based, but
wanting to ensure easy access to all the apps, etc, which I want.

I used to have an old version of XP on the laptop, but dumped that when I
installed Xubuntu. Fortunately I don't normally have any need for Windows,
so don't have to put up with it. :-)

I would like to get a newer laptop or small machine and run Linux on that.
But it seems hard to find one that is mechanically *silent* and can be used
to play audio correctly. i.e. always output the correct sampling rate with
no tampering with the data values for LPCM.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html