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Teletext is a medium where encoded pages of information are broadcast alongside a television programme, and can be decoded on-screen by the viewer at the touch of a button.  Developed in the UK in the early 1970s, the last British teletext service was discontinued in the mid-2010s but teletext is still used in many countries around the world.

Once broadcast, teletext was generally overwritten on the server and the archive status of teletext pages is patchy at best, with (at least in the UK) only a few examples of pages saved by the broadcasters and some pages saved by the public using PC decoder cards.

This website covers efforts to recover teletext pages from television programmes recorded on regular domestic videotape and other methods.

Tape donation and loans

The Teletext Archaeologist archive consists of pages ranging from 1976 until 2018 and is continually expanding.

In particular, we are looking for:

  • Video tape recorded between 1974 and 1980
  • BBC1 before 1984
  • BBC2 until December 1989
  • ITV before 1984
  • Channel Four and S4C, from any era
  • Paramount Comedy Channel recordings

…can you help to plug the gaps?

First-generation copies are best – copies do blur the teletext signals recorded on the tapes.  But if you don’t want to part with original tapes then a good quality dub can still be useful as long as it hasn’t been through a time-base corrector – these can overwrite the teletext data with their own signals.  Please do get in touch via the contact section below!

Bluesky Latest

The latest curated finds are shared primarily on Bluesky – here are the latest posts:

The Teletext Archaeologist

The Teletext Archaeologist

@ttxarchaeologist.bsky.social

Jason Robertson (@jaseinblack.bsky.social) presents a curated selection of teletext pages recovered from videotape. Also on Mastodon at @grim_fandango@mas.to and Facebook www.facebook.com/teletextarchaeologist

1,856 posts 655 followers 77 following
#OnThisDay 1997 : Here's the Saturday night tv schedule on Ceefax from 30th August 1997 in which the late night film would be interrupted for an important newsflash.

(Capture : A Buxton)

#90s
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Images from uploaded services are down at the moment, as are the services themselves. This is because the 'find the main index' code has malfunctioned. I'm working on it 🙂
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A new service has been recovered by PaulB: Ulster from 29 December 1984 22:00

www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/List/3670
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A new service has been recovered by PaulB: BBC1 from 31 December 1993 23:00

www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/List/3671
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A new service has been recovered by Tomsonic41: BBC1 from 30 August 1989 21:24

www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/List/3673
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A new service has been recovered by angrylion2008: ORF1 from 01 November 1996 20:01

www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/List/3675
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A new service has been recovered by angrylion2008: ORF2 from 26 June 1999 18:04

www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/List/3677
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A new service has been recovered by angrylion2008: ZDF from 16 February 1996 23:32

www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/List/3678
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A new service has been recovered by angrylion2008: ORF2 from 08 December 1998 20:05

www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/List/3657
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Blog

Archive Launched!

EXCITING NEWS! The Teletext Archive is launched – browse teletext services through your web browser, whether desktop, tablet or phone. You can do text searches, search by broadcaster and/or date, or just mooch around! https://archive.teletextarchaeologist.org

Interview on The Retro Hour podcast

Great to speak to Dan and Ravi from the Retro Hour podcast about all things teletext! Please give it a listen and subscribe, it’s a very professionally produced show. https://theretrohour.com/teletext-archaeologist-ep147-2/

The Archive

The site now has a list of the services recovered so far, over 1200 teletext services from 1976-2016.  Scroll though at your peril here: https://teletextarchaeologist.org/the-archive/