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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!

Twitter Latest

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


Surely this has now gone too far https://t.co/We4iORqx4E
grim_fandango photo
Dan Farrimond @illarterate
Ceefax Holidays & ET crossover fancy dress klaxon. #teletext https://t.co/dF0lbyt3gf

Anyway, let's check in with Reg the Octopus; then see if you can find the six songs and who Sharon's favourite singer is (1985) https://t.co/QaqkqUx1Qe grim_fandango photo

TV now, and there appears to be nothing remarkable here. At a stretch: TJ Hooker in prime time? (1985) https://t.co/o4J7Kkkns2 grim_fandango photo

Here's the Top 40 from today in 1985. Last Christmas and Do They Know It's Christmas? still hanging in there even though it's February. https://t.co/0zDSx5Boc6 grim_fandango photo

The Ceefax shopping section reads like a dull version of space trading computer game Elite. We have pictures of all the stuff we are talking about apart from vegetables, presumably because the artist wanted to draw a carrot but teletext doesn't have orange. (1985) https://t.co/cI5lUSyMpO grim_fandango photo

Today in 1985 now, and set your calculators to 'maths' because that's 35 years ago. Pit strikes top the news; big news then but nowadays we've moved almost completely off coal as a power source. And banks open on a Sat am having made life difficult for the previous 15 years. https://t.co/pVEbeqz06p grim_fandango photo

Blog

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. Teletext: Back From The Dead – The Retro Hour EP147

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/