BBC Television Ceefax, the first teletext service, launched on 23 September 1974. This service allowed BBC viewers to view textual information such as the latest news on their television. CEEFAX did not make a full transition to digital television, instead being gradually replaced by the new interactive BBCi service before being fully closed down on 22 October 2012. In March 2003 the BBC announced that from the end of May 2003 (subsequently deferred to 14 July) it intended to transmit all eight of its domestic television channels (including the 15 regional variations of BBC 1) unencrypted from the Astra 2D satellite. This
Teletext hardware that could download pages of up-to-date news, reports, facts and figures targeting U.K. agriculture. The original idea was the brainchild of Philips (CAL) Laboratories in 1970. In 1971, CAL engineer John Adams created a design and proposal for UK broadcasters. His configuration contained all the fundamental elements of classic Teletext including pages of 24 rows with 40 characters each, page selection, sub pages of information and vertical blanking interval data transmission. A major objective for Adams during the concept development stage was to make Teletext affordable to the home user. In reality, there was no scope to make an