From: ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv.uk
Subject: Re: Teething probs for new teletext
Date: 7 Jan 1993 11:36:44 -0000
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: oak5.doc.ic.ac.uk

In article <726268312snx@apusapus.demon.co.uk> tfj@apusapus.demon.co.uk (Trevor Jenkins) writes:
>
>In article <9301051550.AA23278@deepthought.cs.utexas.edu> EEC@PORTIA.UMDS.LON.AC.UK writes:
>
>> > From: sss@castle.ed.ac.uk (S S Sturrock)
>
>> > Then of course, there is teletext on 3/4 which is a complete disaster,
>> > where is the clock on channel 4 pray tell?  And how come the other day I

That's due to the fact they've put page 100 on a cycle of it's own,
which only gets updated every 10-15 seconds. Thus the clock when
displayed on it's own gets updated every 10-15 seconds - very
usefull.

>> > put on ITV and got teletext on 4 and on Ch4 there was none at all?
>> > Teething problems?  I'll say!

The best cock-ups that i've noticed are (Meidian region) :

1) On day 1 (Friday 1st) from about mid-afternoon onwards the T.V.
listing pages showed listings for the day before (a day when Teletext
3/4 weren't even broadcasting).

2) On the first day the schedule slicer was a 3 page multipage, where
pages 2 and 3 simply tild you that they were pages of a multipage.
Very useful.

3) The cinema listings for the meidian region are totally stuffed, and
still are as far as I can tell, almost a week later. For example the
subdivition 'g' to 'p' in the region contains 6 pages telling you
what's on in a cinema in Barrow-in-Furness. Two problems there 'B' is
not between 'G' and 'P', and Barrow-in-Furness is not in the South and
South East of England. 

4) The shedule slicer seems to be updated about 15 minutes after
programs start, so you can have a nice list of what you've missed :-)

5) The thing that automatically adds the multi-page numbers to the
bottom right hand corner on day one placed these numbers ALWAYS even
when there was something already there, obliterating it.

>
>> Also subtitles are not being transmitted properly for ITV programmes
>
>Given that the driving force behind the creation of teletext was to provide
>sub-titles this is a very serious failure.
>
>> - the teletext providers are trying to blame
>> this on the ITV companies, but the ITV companies says it's Teletext's
>> fault!
>
>We can guess the back-side covering that's going on there can't we. My
>monies on the Teletext providers being at fault. The data is being provided
>by them afterall.

I'm not sure that it is necessarily Teletexts fault. Subtitles WERE
(in the past) the resposibility of the teletext supplier. But then
there was an upgrade of the service to allow for regional variations
(ie. subtitled programmes being shown a diferent times in different
regions). It also allowed subtitles to be added live (as ITN did for
their national news, and TVS did for their local news).

>
>> The organisation is also crap.

Yep. What I really hate is the fact that the page numbers don't match
between ITV and CH4. For example the TV listings, ITV 111-114, CH4
551-554, even worse shedule slicer ITV 120, CH4 555 (I think, can't
quite remember).

And has anyone noticed that 4-Tel has survivedm you wouldn't think so
apart from one small mention on the main index of Teletext on 4. Pages
300-399 have been given to 4-Tel, 300 C4 today listing, previews from
350-370 other bits above 370. But what does annoy me about this
service is that there are no cross references to the previews so you
have to walk your way through the pages 350-370 to find the programme
you want to find info about. I know they are in time order, but that
only gives you a chance to narrow it down to about 5 pages. I'm very
surprised that even the listing on 300 doesn't give cross referencing.

Ian

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