Tag Archives: teletext

Russian teletext on Channel 31, Moscow, 1996, via coub

Russian teletext, 2017-2019. (I have no idea what the text says)

From СИСТЕМА ТЕЛЕТЕКСТ, a document about the Russian teletext standard GOST R 50861-96 from 1996 (updated in 2017). It almost looks like it was drawn by hand?

Zapzilla is a teletext browser for Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. It lets you browse and save teletext pages, and supports all the (WST) graphics standards and character sets. Also adds features like clickable links. It was mainly developed by Michael H. Schimek in the 2000’s.

The Payam Network, Iran’s teletext service, was launched in 1995. It was in English at first, but after creating new fonts, software and decoders, it was launched in Farsi three years later. It was shut down in 2015, according to this.

Munhwa Broadcasting (MBC) in Korea launched their teletext service 15 September, 1988 according to this news clip. It might have been based on the Japanese JTES teletext standard (textmode, vector, and pixel graphics) but not sure. Btw, the Korean term for teletext is 문자 다중 방송.

Vietnamese teletext character set made by Colin Hinson at Europe Technologies. This seems to have been for the first Vietnamese teletext service, Vitek, in 2004. The photo was taken before all the characters were finished.

The Vietnamese script needs at least 134 additional letters to ASCII, which has lead to solutions like VISCII and VSCII in the past. Hinson describes the process in detail here, but it seems like they simply removed enough characters to make it work. :-)

Turkish teletext pages shown after hours on Show TV, taken from this video. Unknown year.

Teletext pages from Extravision, an Antiope teletext service on KNXT-TV in Los Angeles (owned by CBS). These black & white photos are from the early trials, ca 1981. The full Extravision service began in 1983.

Ad for the RCTI’s teletext (teleteks) service. Launched in 1994, it was the first teletext service in Indonesia.