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by sparky_ 784 days ago
Yes, it wasn't a thing in the US, but basically all televisions in Europe had a text mode for this, and it was very popular when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.
1 comments
joezydeco 784 days ago
US televisions didn't have support for the blanking interval data and GUI, and it never got added to the NTSC standards.

For a brief period in the 1980s a few companies tried to provide teletext service, either over modem or a UHF decoder to a home computer or - more bizarrely - as a read-only presentation done overnight when no other scheduled programming was being shown.

Keyfax in Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgs0kbxo68w

Keycom home service: https://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/history/Keycom.htm

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Aloha 784 days ago
I think it did get added to the NTSC Standards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NABTS

That said, there were several other competing standards offered at the same time including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_(teletext)

The issue of course - like everything else with standards adoption in the states, the decoder wasn't mandated to be included with TV sets.

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