Was it fascinating? Did it feel like the amazing future? Were you all too aware of the mounting cost relative to what you were actually doing?
At that time, you have to remember there was no other way to access those services in real time.
Impressive, I don’t think I’d heard of Ceefax. It seems like it was broadcast and then recorded, and then this set top box knew how to interpret and parse the data into this format.
Basically in CRT screens, the arm that zapped the glass of the screen needed to stop zapping the screen and return to the top again. So there was a gap in the broadcast to let this happen. Some engineers saw this gap and decided to put data in there. Originally for subtitles, but they realised they can make an entire news service with it.
