Re:Ceefax - A love letter
by joezydeco on Wednesday April 18, 2012 @10:37AM
(#3858129)
In Chicago, they tried a non-interactive version of Ceefax (renamed "Keyfax"). It ran on an independent UHF station (WFLD-32, now Fox) late at night after normal programming had ended. Wow, remember that? Stations actually signed off for the night.
The longer story is that the Sun-Times and Honeywell tried to launch Ceefax here, but the british-designed decoders would need a few years to get approved by Underwriters Labs, so the static service ran ahead of the launch. When Keyfax actually launched, it flopped. It was also shitcanned by Rupert Murdoch, who had bought the Sun-Times in the 80s and was quoted as saying "I do not believe that tomorrow's newspaper will be delivered on a TV screen".
Anyway, here's some nostalgia and a capture of the Keyfax system. It was kind of boring after a while:
The longer story is that the Sun-Times and Honeywell tried to launch Ceefax here, but the british-designed decoders would need a few years to get approved by Underwriters Labs, so the static service ran ahead of the launch. When Keyfax actually launched, it flopped. It was also shitcanned by Rupert Murdoch, who had bought the Sun-Times in the 80s and was quoted as saying "I do not believe that tomorrow's newspaper will be delivered on a TV screen".
Anyway, here's some nostalgia and a capture of the Keyfax system. It was kind of boring after a while:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fvC6mdAK8