Hmm. To me the screen layout looks quite like a Teletext page. I have no idea how this service was called in the UK (The name Viewtext pops up, but I'm not shure). These are data pages, transmitted via 'invisible' lines, 'between' or 'below' the picture (As a bunch of other information also is). There are 1000 addressable main pages, transmitted in a continuos stream. THe display controler waits just for the selected page, and every time it comes around the diplay memory is refeshed. Due this behaviour the system is also used to produce captions, by displaying pages with just 2-3 lines of text and a transparent background. Basicly every TV set is equipped with a decoder. There are nifty controlers around (or at least have been, back when TV Chipsets where less integrated), which can be used for home projects. Well, my guess is based on the screen layout. Especialy because of the top line, which is the status line, holding the actual page, and the right now passing page in the upper left, channel ID, date and time in the upper right. Both are not part of the page, but inserted from the controller - the later ones are taken was the cheapest way to get an atomic clock for your computer, just decode the according line and you got a perfect usable ASCII string :) Since this information is updated every picture (25 times a second) some comercial stations violate the standard by sending scrolling advertisements instead of the time. It may capture the readers eye, but I hate it. Anyway, the important fact is that it is impossible to supress these fields (or it would at least require a custom controller). Now, back to the picture, what realy puzzles me is the keyboard. The service is strict one way, you could only select a page, and a regular remote is all you need. Well, there have been ideas to make it some kind of interactive media by using page sequences, where the remote can be used to jump to a set of 4 predefined follow ups, coloured keys are usualy used for that. So TV stations could offer simple multiple coice games, also a 'unhide' command is available (and usualy assigned to another button) to allot Question/answer games, where the user would press the unhide button to reveal the answer. Then there has been an atempt to transform it into a real online media, where the user would send his request via a low data rate connection on his phone, and his local cable company would insert the requested page. Quite similar as some satelite internet services do today. It died after some proof of concept installations, since the data transmission is in band and part of the TV signal supplied by the channel, and not the cable company. No, the keyboard realy puzzles me. Of course it could be the British equivalent of our (CEPT based BTx system, a early online service to be used on a 1200/75 connection with pages, made in a way to be displayed on you telly. But then the picture layout would be quite different. That service hat a quite more apropriate set of graphic elements. Of course it could always be a mockup for such an online service, using a Teletext page ... Of course Gruss H. P.S.: For the caption, I'd say Loveletters, a full lenght movie after Rosamunde Pilcher :) -- VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Damn! I wish I hadn't spent all that money on the big TV... Then I could afford a desk and chair.

Adrian Vickers wrote: I think it's a Prestel adaptor made by Tandata. I had one, somewhere, in the original polystyrene packaging. There's one at Binary Dinosaurs: http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Tandata/viewdata.htm -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk