Back before the Internet was much of a thing, there used to be a service that many broadcasters transmitted in a "hidden" part of each video frame. It was called teletext, and it basically continually sent <1 kilobyte "pages" that were mostly text and some VERY basic color graphics.
Depending on the station, you might get news, sports, weather, naughty personals, and some very rudimentary games. If you're wondering why remotes have red, yellow, green and blue buttons to this day, teletext had a lot to do with that.
It was much more popular in Europe than in the U.S., though we used the vertical blanking interval for closed captions, USENET news feeds (Project Stargate) and electronic program guides for Sony DVRs and many VCRs.
Though teletext's day has faded, I am happy to report that RTS, a Serbian broadcaster on Galaxy 19, is now transmitting a full stack of teletext (probably DVB-TXT, to be precise) pages on top of their signal.
If you have a DVB receiver that understands Teletext or has a "text" button, I encourage you to go try it out or show your kids a little piece of history.
Depending on the station, you might get news, sports, weather, naughty personals, and some very rudimentary games. If you're wondering why remotes have red, yellow, green and blue buttons to this day, teletext had a lot to do with that.
It was much more popular in Europe than in the U.S., though we used the vertical blanking interval for closed captions, USENET news feeds (Project Stargate) and electronic program guides for Sony DVRs and many VCRs.
Though teletext's day has faded, I am happy to report that RTS, a Serbian broadcaster on Galaxy 19, is now transmitting a full stack of teletext (probably DVB-TXT, to be precise) pages on top of their signal.
If you have a DVB receiver that understands Teletext or has a "text" button, I encourage you to go try it out or show your kids a little piece of history.
