BBC Red Button BBC Red Button BBC Red Button is a branding used for digital interactive television services provided by the BBC, and broadcast in the United Kingdom. The services replaced Ceefax, the BBC's analogue teletext service. The service was launched in September 1999 as BBC Text. It was relaunched in November 2001 under the BBCi brand and operated under this name until late 2008, when it was rebranded as BBC Red Button. The "red button" name refers to the common interface on remote controls for digital televisions and set-top boxes, a red push-button which launches digital teletext services. Although initially marketed as
Teletext Teletext Teletext (or broadcast teletext) is a television information retrieval service created in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s by the Philips Lead Designer for VDUs, John Adams. Teletext is a means of sending pages of text and simple geometric shapes from mosaic blocks to a VBI decoder equipped television screen by use of a number of reserved vertical blanking interval lines that together form the dark band dividing pictures horizontally on the television screen. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including news, weather and TV schedules. Paged subtitle (or closed captioning) information is also transmitted within