[kahawe]

In Austria and Germany the telcos were trying to push a similar technology called "BTX" ("Bildschirmtext", German for "screen text") or "Vtx" (Videotext) but it never really caught on and died even faster when the internet came around. But similar to internet-on-your-TV boxes, there was the "MUPID[1]" supposed to give you access to BTX on your tv!

I remember when I was in France most roadhouses had minitel terminals which you could feed with coins, much like phone booths back in the day or internet-corners nowadays. This was already the time when the internet was slowly starting to spread over here, at least amongst young geeks and seeing the minitel still widely in use like that was really weird for me.

[1] http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1112&...