Freeview / Teletext help please

Lally

Im looking for help for my parents. My Dad uses teletext every day, I think he knows every page off by heart....basically he cannot live without it. No questions asked.

My Mum decided to cancel her (basic) NTL package and buy a Freeview box to save money. Only one problem, the Digi text is no use for my Dad. And, now he can't get normal teletext either. Im not sure if that is standard or if its the way I have set it up.

So as it stands I would need to get rid of the Freeview box and hook them back up the old fashioned way, and she would need to start up again with NTL.

BUT, I was thinking of tv's that have Integrated Freeview in them. Possibly the cost of one of these would equal Mums yearly NTL subscriptions and the cost of a Freeview box put together. If I took this route for them, would my dad get the 'normal' telextext that he so badly needs?

Or is there any way they can keep the Freeview and he can still use the TV/text the old fashioned way?

Thanks if you're still with me......

Ross_Brown_2

Lally wrote:

My Mum decided to cancel her (basic) NTL package and buy a Freeview box to save money. Only one problem, the Digi text is no use for my Dad. And, now he can't get normal teletext either. Im not sure if that is standard or if its the way I have set it up.

Or is there any way they can keep the Freeview and he can still use the TV/text the old fashioned way?

Teletext (the service) is available on Channel 100 of a Freeview box. A Ceefax-like service is available on all BBC channels. There are also some other text services throughout the system. Just get your Dad to go slowly through the channels on his Freeview box - and he'll find all the text/information he could ever need.

Oh - and if it's subtitles he's looking for, if they're broadcast with a programme, then you don't access them via Teletext/Ceefax but use the "Subtitles" button on the remote control.

Hope that helps,
Ross

Lally

Thanks, its not the subtitles he is after. He is a sport daft man and he will put it onto C4 and go through all the Horse racing pages on there...then he will flick to BBC2 (or whatever) for golf prices and scores.....And so on and so forth. He needs it for his job. And so he cant live without it. We tried the digi text and I said "give me a page number" and keyed it in to see if it was the same, but it wasn't.

Joe_Bloggs

If you can get freeview via the terrestrial aerial route then you should also be able to get the original analogue TV services with their associated teletext/ceefax services. How are you connecting your TV to your freeview box ?
J_B.

Joe_Bloggs

If you can get freeview via the terrestrial aerial route then you should also be able to get the original analogue TV services with their associated teletext/ceefax services. How are you connecting your TV to your freeview box ?
J_B.
PS the site has become so unreliable it is a good idea to copy any posts to a text file incase you lose the post.

Lally

I just followed the instructions in the manual. I cant remember 100% to be honest.... I think that the aerial must be going into the Freeview box. When I switched the box off, there were no visible channels and therefore no teletext.

Dan29

Lally wrote:

I just followed the instructions in the manual. I cant remember 100% to be honest.... I think that the aerial must be going into the Freeview box. When I switched the box off, there were no visible channels and therefore no teletext.

To get the old-fashioned teletext back you could get an aerial splitter to enable you to have both a lead from the aerial going into the Freeview box, and another lead from the same aerial going into the back of the tv to get the analogue channels.

Or, if your Freeview box has what I believe is called an "RF loopthrough", you don't need to do this; just connect a lead from the "RF out" or "aerial out" socket on the back of the Freeview box to the "RF in" or "aerial in" socket on the back of the tv.

However I was under the impression that BBC text now had page numbers - are these not the same as the old ones?

Lally

I will print this off and try it at their house tomorrow. They bought a quite decent Sony box so hopefully it will have that facility, or else I will switch the cables around before we start talking new TV's.

BBC has some pages that are the same, ie 555 for the lottery, possibly a lot more. But we did a quick look at 'Golf' on C4 today and all that came up was 3 headlines, whereas on normal teletext there are screeds and screeds of page numbers and headlines. Sadly, the pages he needs aren't there.

Dan29

Sounds like a cable from the back of the box to the tv is your best bet to get the analogue channels back. If the box is a VTXD800U it definitely has RF loopthrough; one of the sockets shown at the bottom of this pic will have the aerial lead going it, so you just need to plug a lead from the other socket to the aerial socket on the back of the tv:

Lally

Yeah thats the one!

Quidzin

Hi Lally,

I know exactly what you mean as I had the same problem as your dad.I use the BBC pages for live betting shows on the greyhounds and the digital ceefax is useless.Heres how I did it ( there may be better ways but this works!)
Make sure your TV,freeview and video are all connected using the RF cables.Unplug the scart lead going in to your TV.Switch on the video and select the AV OUTPUT. Select the video channel on your TV and freeview can be watched.To go back to the analogue signal(and ceefax!)just switch the TV from AV to TV or turn off the Freeview box.Hope that makes sense.