I have noticed that on most televisions, there is an option to turn on “Text”. Having visited the U.K before, i know that over there the text function shows a screen with T.V listings, news and other information depending on the channel. Does anyone know any U.S stations that use this text funtion? I have tried it before, and on certain channels I get a large black box covering most of the screen. It does not do anything on most channels.
This page discusses teletext services in the US.
While it never took off the way it has in the UK, it seems that:
Funny how the US seems to be so backward in many respects. 
A friend of mine from Chicago says that in addition to not having teletext, RDS (where radio stations emit a signal that allows suitably equipped radio sets to display the station’s name and other details - telephone number, etc. - in addition to just showing the frequency) also failed to take off over there, while it is pretty much the standard all over Europe these days. I suspect (and this is just my own theory) that it has something to do with the fact that the States had hundreds of TV and radio stations way before broadcasting was liberalised in most European countries, and a lot of radio/TV stations must still use the old broadcasting infrastructure inherited from early on in the last century. As radio and TV became deregulated far more recently in most European countries than in the US, I guess that a great many new commercial radio stations were able to invest in the latest technology, which came with features like RDS.
Also, with regard to teletext, I wonder if the fact that the internet became so widespread so early on had anything to do with the lack of interest in Teletext, which is a much slower, less interactive and less visually exciting way of obtaining information.
The UK has had teletext since 1972, so the internet can’t be the reason.
I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on either. I have an RCA tv with Rogers cable service, which means I do have the GuidePlus+ feature. Its one of those simple, yet incredibly convenient things I don’t know how I ever did without it.
Er, sort of. Ceefax, which was the first teletext system in the world was first tested in October 1972 (by which time proto-internet ARPANET was also up and running), but only went on-line (with thirty pages) in 1975 (only a year before the Queen of England sent her first email from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern.
And who had a teletext-capable TV in 1975? In 1980? We didn’t have a colour set until the early '80s, and that was a tiny rented Sony with six mechanical pushbuttons to change the channels. The BBC used to broadcast “pages from ceefax,” accompanied by muzak, on Saturday mornings before the programmes started, though. My mother bought a teletext TV sometime after I left England, so definitely after 1992. I bought my first teletext-enabled TV in about 1997. (I’ve still got it).
And I didn’t say it was THE REASON, just a possible factor…
According to the cite I gave (and my reading of it), Teletext failed in the USA for the following reasons:
The FCC didn’t mandate any standard, which meant that their were competing systems in use.
CBS and NBC used NABTS, which was the most advanced system. Apart from the decoders (set-top boxes) being expensive, the manufacturers only offered them in cities tv stations offered teletext. CBS and NBC killed off their version of Teletext in the late '80s.
Zenith used WST (the system we have in the UK) and built its decoders into their Digital System 3 televisions. This system received a service called Keyfax, which you could get all over the country.
What killed Keyfax off was Closed Captioning. Apparently, adding CC decoders to System 3 sets wouldn’t work and Zenith didn’t add Teletext decoders to the replacement sets.
Note to passing spelling and/or grammar nazis:
I know.
I don’t get this talk of it being “killed off”.
I have this service - we’re not paying for it; we didn’t have to by a special tv. It may not be that popular, but the service exists and apparently its popular enough that every tv station on my cable service offers it.
No, you have GuidePlus+. I said that Keyfax, a service that ran in the USA from 1986-1994, was killed off.
being my take on the following paragraph:
So why does my Zenith and Samsung T.Vs come with this function if Teletext isn’t even offered in the U.S?
Presuming your Zenith is less then 10 years old, I’d guess that they have decoders for Guide Plus+ but for some reason you don’t receive the service.
Ah, just found this (Google’s HTML version of a .pdf). Seems that there’s been a bit of fuss between Gemstar (the company behind Guide Plus+), the FCC and cable companies due to Gemstar wanting cable companies to have to carry its service.
Just for the record, my car radio has RDS and a handful of stations in the Atlanta area do use it. Z93 and Star94 both show up that way on my display. There are a few others but I don’t recall who right now. (99X did until a few weeks ago when it suddenly stopped; don’t know why.)
Sorry tanstaafl, I didn’t mean to imply that RDS doesn’t exist in the States (and having never been there myself was only recounting something I heard from an American friend of mine) but that it isn’t nearly as widely used as it is in Europe. Having said that, I hear that some American stations actually play music that you can listen to (unlike the techno crap that jams the airwaves where I live), so maybe you have less need for such gimmicks…
Ah, when closed captioning came out in the usa, there were several options for it, c1, c2, text1, text2, etc. ‘Text’ displayed a list of captioned programs for the day. Don’t confuse it with Text UK style.c1 just turned captioning on regular programs. I have a closed caption decoder from that time period that explains this stuff.
BTW, the best list of programming for your zip code can be found at clicktv.com There you can make your own list by program type-reality,game, sports, etc. Completely free & printable, program listings are better than Guide plus because they mention if a show is a repeat & you can search like 2 weeks of listings…
Ya but GuidePlus doesn’t require me ever having to leave my seat 
Why do my fairly new TVs have options for TEXT1 through 4 and CC1 through 4? Why have TEXT if nothing uses it? And why 4 CCs?
Also, newer DirecTV systems come with some thing that lets you get information on artists and albums on music channels, read through news, see local weather reports, etc. depending on which channel you’re on. Is this some sort of more advanced TeleText system? Or something completely different?
Just done some more reading online (I’m easily amused) and from what I’ve read, it seems that Caption Vision (CC) is capable of displaying both closed captions and some kind of text service.
CC1 would be captions in English, CC2 maybe Spanish and so on. I would assume the TEXT1 - 4 would be similar. It just looks like a lot of stations broadcast the CC stuff, but don’t bother with TEXT.
From here: