There are also mobile apps for accessing Teletext.
Kuraj · 16m ago
Polish person here, I can confirm that x-rated stuff on teletext was very much a thing. I have no reason to believe the ad is fake
mvdwoord · 3h ago
Thanks for sending me down a little mini rabbit hole, this triggered some memories on old teletext decoders for Amiga back in the 90s.
Anyway, I distinctly remember my father getting a new TV with teletext around 1987, and I could play endlessly with that. Also amazing that up until way in the 2000s I knew people who relied on it as the primary source for basic headlines, weather, but also traffic information on trains as well as expected landing times for airplanes. Of course the football standings in the Dutch Eredivisie was possibly the most viewed page of all. Completely wiped out by the internet, but all in all a surprisingly long run for any tech.
It's not at all, although we can discuss the nature of the medium.
>Last year, the Teletekst app was used daily by an average of 690,000 people. They opened the app an average of 2.4 million times per day. The news index on page 101 was accessed 1.9 billion times in 2024, making it the most visited page, followed by the football index 801, with 530 million visits.
Still that many! Incredible. I do remember reading about Dutch teletext being maintained (content wise) by only one or two people. Fascinating phenomenon.
NoboruWataya · 1h ago
That looks quite nice. A lot cleaner than the Irish teletext I remember with its very blocky text. I assume it is benefiting from modern fonts on that page and didn't look like that in the 90s?
It re-confirms my view that the terminal can be a great way to consume news if the content is specifically created for that format. Just using elinks to browse news websites doesn't really work well these days. I wonder if there are any telnet-based news services (or similar) out there still.
duckerduck · 1h ago
I just found out today that the Dutch teletext can be viewed through ssh:
`ssh teletekst.nl`
tgaj · 2h ago
"Poland started with teletext broadcasts in 1988, the year before they exited the USSR."
It's a small detail but Poland was never a part of the USSR. Could be changed to "exited the Eastern Bloc".
benchly · 51m ago
Nice article! I had rediscovered teletext for myself a few years ago, only vaguely remembering it existed (or something similar) in select cities in the US when I was a kid, but it was not something I paid much attention to. Getting interested, I began to wonder if you can set up your own teletext service.
For those like me who weren't familiar with the service or lived in a country that really didn't have it, there's this informative site: https://teletextarchaeologist.org/
Edit: Sorry all, it looks like teletextarcheologist.org went dormant, so the archive no longer seems to be working.
There are also mobile apps for accessing Teletext.
Anyway, I distinctly remember my father getting a new TV with teletext around 1987, and I could play endlessly with that. Also amazing that up until way in the 2000s I knew people who relied on it as the primary source for basic headlines, weather, but also traffic information on trains as well as expected landing times for airplanes. Of course the football standings in the Dutch Eredivisie was possibly the most viewed page of all. Completely wiped out by the internet, but all in all a surprisingly long run for any tech.
p.s. online still available (Dutch)
https://teletekst-data.nos.nl/webplus?p=100-01
It's not at all, although we can discuss the nature of the medium.
>Last year, the Teletekst app was used daily by an average of 690,000 people. They opened the app an average of 2.4 million times per day. The news index on page 101 was accessed 1.9 billion times in 2024, making it the most visited page, followed by the football index 801, with 530 million visits.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2561892-informatief-en-zonder-poppenk... (Dutch news article)
It re-confirms my view that the terminal can be a great way to consume news if the content is specifically created for that format. Just using elinks to browse news websites doesn't really work well these days. I wonder if there are any telnet-based news services (or similar) out there still.
`ssh teletekst.nl`
It's a small detail but Poland was never a part of the USSR. Could be changed to "exited the Eastern Bloc".
Naturally, you can: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/create-your-own-teletext-se...
For those like me who weren't familiar with the service or lived in a country that really didn't have it, there's this informative site: https://teletextarchaeologist.org/
Edit: Sorry all, it looks like teletextarcheologist.org went dormant, so the archive no longer seems to be working.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT%C3%89_Aertel
I don't have terrestrial TV (saorview) anymore to test, but apparently its still broadcast according to the wiki.
Teletext was very handy pre-internet, weather, news, TV listings, flight times etc, all on a feed.
The Internet was invented in 1973 and testing began of the new protocols in 1975.
Teletext, in the form of Ceefax, was pioneered by the BBC in 1972.
So yes, Teletext was indeed pre-Internet. (-: