Teletext for Windows v1.39

Teletext for DOS is a great little program, but really it is about time we had something that, you know, multitasks!

WinTTX offers a way to connect your old Ground Control / Octopus teletext receiver to any PC with a parallel port and compatible operating system.
Now I know I don't need to explain teletext - we've all seen it. However be aware that the inventors of teletext (the BBC) plan to phase it out when the analogue transmitters are shut down (starting year, completing in 2012). It has already been phased out on SkyDigital, to be replaced with the more comprehensive digital text services (but you can't interrogate any of that stuff using a computer). In short, enjoy teletext while you still can!

If you are European, Japanese, Australian, etc... chances are good that you have come across teletext services. Developed by the BBC and IBA in the late '70s, this simple text service provides a 40x25 text screen which can display text in eight colours (which may include coloured backgrounds). Text can 'flash' and also be 'concealed' (press the 'Reveal' button on your remote controller to make the text visible). Early video programming systems and electronic programme display data was broadcast using the teletext system as a base. Back in the early '80s when 32K was oodles of memory, the BBC broadcast software using teletext - intended for reception by specialist computer-controlled teletext receivers such as the UTA-3 you'll need for use with WinTTX.
In addition to the text, the specification provides for a 'mosaic' graphics system, where the text display can be replaced by dots on a 2x3 matrix. This gives the maximum screen resolution as 64x72. The display memory can be stored in 1 kilobyte of memory, though often 2Kb is used per page for the reception of extension packets for additional features such as FastText.
Teletext, as a system, is dying out, losing in the face of better-looking digital information services such as those provided by channels on the SkyDigital platform. However there is still confidence in teletext due to its simplicity and reliability - remember that teletext is over thirty years old. I think the only system of similar vintage still in use today is the French Minitel (which is much like teletext via phone lines, and it itself is suffering due to the uptake in broadband). This confidence in teletext is reflected in the fact that many European satellite receivers can display teletext information to you (the Sky Digibox is an exception, it can only insert the teletext data into the output picture). Some broadcasters have so far rejected "interactive" services in favour of teletext on various grounds, such as cost or complexity. The Irish, in particular, still make extensive use of teletext. Likewise, teletext is still frequently used for subtitling (most major European broadcasters provide subtitles via teletext). It is an interesting omission that many satellite receivers have an option to "display subtitles", but no option to determine what language to display, if even this is supported in DBS. Using teletext, multi-lingual subtitling in cross-over areas is easy. The Welsh broadcaster S4C offers subtitling in Welsh and English. I can see applications in similar regions (Gaellic/English, Breton/French, Basque/Spanish) as well as in countries with multiple languages (Flemmish/French, German/French/Italian, Swedish/Norwegian), etc.
Oh, and remember that as teletext information is carried with the television picture, it is totally free. You don't pay anything extra for teletext, and no special teletext subscription is required. All you need is a teletext-capable TV (or satellite receiver, computer interface, etc - something that can decode teletext for you).

If you look at a map of teletext use, and discount developing nations and places where there was no desire for teletext or a variation on the theme (such as the France's 'Antiope', which was phased out in the early '90s and replaced by traditional teletext), there is one rather amusing omission on the map:

If you think I'm not being nice to the Americans, perhaps that is true. In the heyday of teletext (the '80s and '90s), there were incredible feature-laden services in the United Kingdom and many televisions in the late '80s came with teletext as an option; and in the '90s more or less "as standard". The TV I bought myself in the UK (circa 1999) was the cheapest little Japanese portable I could find in a large Tescos. It offered PAL, NTSC, dead-easy automatic setup, nice colour reproduction, low power consumption, and teletext. These are all "base" technologies - I wouldn't purchase a TV if it didn't offer at least those features. Want something even more impressive? My Daewoo video recorder (PDC compatible, that's "packet 8/30 format 2" in teletext terms) was also capable of responding to the format 1 of "packet 8/30". How do I know this? When it received off-air signals, it used to set its clock automatically and perform summer-time adjustment all by itself. This is one of the less obvious features of teletext, but certainly a useful one!
It would be a scenario repeated across Europe. Spanish TV? Offers teletext. French TV? After a brief foray into a home-grown solution, they switched to teletext. German TV? Offers teletext. Dutch TV? Swedish TV? Swiss TV? Belgian, Irish, Portuguese... the list goes on. Countries across Europe fail to agree on many things, but they all agreed on teletext.
Perhaps America's problem was they expected too much, set their hopes too high, and didn't fully appreciate that 10 pages a second is a good data rate to extract from a television broadcast. Because of this, they never really appreciated what teletext could offer them.
Oh well, their loss.

I only include this length description here as there may be Americans who stumble across this software and are like "what's teletext?". There was some use of WST (World Standard Teletext) in the US - Wisconsin, Los Angeles and vicinity, and Chicago; as well as the cable channel WTBS - most of these services being fairly short-lived and occurring in the '80s.

It is perhaps ironic that the two American network channels that are freely available on European satellite offered extensive teletext services.
CNBC had a fairly simple service in 2001, which was expanding by 2003. It is still going today however the channel sold out to Sky. You need a viewing card to watch it at 28°E , while it is free-to-air at 19°E. Shame, I liked watching Jay Leno.
The leader of the pack, and perhaps second only to BBC's unimitable Ceefax service, was CNN. Their teletext service was abandoned in 2005; along with MTV ceasing their teletext service in the UK and (I think) Germany also.

The sad quirk, talking of cessation of service, is that the BBC provide a full and complete teletext service by terrestrial analogue. On digital satellite, only BBC2 carries a tiny (i.e. 15 page) snippet of the service listing TV schedules, recipes (none when I looked) and stuff for schools (will return in September, it said). I would imagine that when the last British analogue transmitter ceases broadcast in 2012, the BBC's Ceefax service, and the service that gave teletext to the world, will simply vanish into history. Teletext will probably still remain, for subtitling, but the text services that have kept viewers informed for what will be nearly forty years will be nowt but a memory.

So here is WinTTX. Get it running, enjoy teletext while it is still around...

• Added "AllowIO" and "PortTalk.sys" (by Craig Peacock) so that WinTTX may be used under Windows XP. Updated the help file accordingly.
• Wrote a setup utility to get the paths and associations and stuff all set up correctly; this is run by the installer and will set up things depending on your operating system.

In the previous version 1.38 (2007/07/06):

• Flashing content is now displayed. with the proviso that content in the header will not flash - however flashing stuff in the header has, in my experience, been a simple matter of bad reception.
  The algorithm is quite complicated, to provide flashing where flashing is required and no flash to save wasting time when there is nothing to flash. In addition, if we are maintaining a record of what is and isn't flash, there'll be a necessity to write the rolling header into the correct buffer(s).
  On a purely geeky level, the flash is fixed to be a 75% duty cycle on a 1.28 second period (i.e. 960cs on, 320cs off). Just like the SAA5240 that this software is designed to work with, and emulate.
   
  
• The size of a character space is now a fixed value. This will only occur on systems that, for some reason, do not have the Terminal bitmap font (which is \Windows\Fonts\VGAOEM_0.FON), where WinTTX will try to substitute Courier New, and if that fails (shouldn't!), then it's anybody's guess as to what Windows will display instead!
  This is important as previously WinTTX altered the positioning and mosaics depending on the size of the font actually used, which looked very odd with the substitute font.
   
  
• Modifications to the mosaic graphics to look better on-screen.
   
  
• WinTTX will now try to interpet email addresses and URLs which may be included in teletext pages.
  - For email, it will understand "@", "(at)", and "<at>" as being the same. This is necessary as only the English national option character set contains the '@' symbol.
    (email me if you would like another method added) - For URLs, it will look for "http://" at the start. It will then look for "www" at the start. Finally, it will look at the end for any of ".ca", ".de", ".fr", ".it", ".tv", ".com", ".net", ".org", ".co.uk", or ".uk.com".
    (email me if you would like another method added)
   
  
• Added a hack to remove extraneous periods ('.') from URLs. This is because the BBC likes to be syntactually correct and finish sentences with a full stop, even if this is at the end of a URL. Example? Page 643 on the very-cut-down service on BBC2 ends with:

  For further help with your studies,
  visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/.

  I winder how many people have typed that into their browser complete with '.', does the BBC's website cater for this error? Whatever. WinTTX will spot the full stop and remove it from the URL.
   
  
• Special help page number "099" will launch the Windows on-line help for WinTTX.

You will need:

• A parallel port (preferably an actual one and not a USB-faked one)
   
  
• A special lead which plugs into your parallel port (you can build this yourself, see below)
  Sorry: I am not able to supply pre-built leads.
   
  
• A teletext receiver (see below)
   
  
• A compatible operating system (Windows 95 or later)
   
  
• WinTTX software

This software is designed to work with the Ground Control UTA-3 teletext receiver, which I believe is the model that was also marketed by Octopus Systems.

Other IIC-connected receivers may work...
Does your receiver work with my !Teletext under RISC OS? Does it work with Paul Skirrow's !Teletext+ under RISC OS?
If the answer is yes, then it should work with WinTTX!

If you have any teletext equipment that is no longer required (i.e. the Morley receiver, a Ground Control UTA-1, the Acorn Teletext Adaptor (not the 1MHz cheese-wedge one), the DezignIT receiver, the XOB receiver, etc), please consider sending it to me so I that I may provide support for that device within WinTTX.

I am sorry to say that the Acorn Teletext Adapter (the one housed in the big 'cheese wedge' case) uses an interface specific to the BBC range of machines (the 1MHz bus) and also extremely specific timing (so it won't even work on an A5000 with a 1Mhz bus add-on). Thus, while this unit is quite a capable receiver, it looks unlikely that it will be supported on anything non-BBC; in the many years that the Archimedes range of computers has existed, I've not seen or heard of anybody who has managed it.
HOWEVER, it is commonly known that 'I Have No Life'™, so if anybody out there happens to be in possession of a circuit diagram and details of the interfacing and timing... I'd be interested in at least giving it a go...

Here is the schematic and a picture of my lead as assembled. Full details are given in the help file...

WinTTX download
winttx1-39inst.exe (555K)	Version 1.39 2008/02/18	WinTTX standard distribution.
WinTTX previous versions
winttx1-38inst.exe (506K)	Version 1.38 2007/07/06	WinTTX standard distribution.
winttx1-37inst.exe (503K)	Version 1.37 2007/06/28	WinTTX standard distribution.
winttx1-36inst.exe (513K)	Version 1.36 2007/04/16	WinTTX standard distribution.
THIS SOFTWARE IS INTENDED FOR MICROSOFT WINDOWS.