Yes, it wasn't a thing in the US, but basically all televisions in Europe had a text mode for this, and it was very popular when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.
US televisions didn't have support for the blanking interval data and GUI, and it never got added to the NTSC standards.
For a brief period in the 1980s a few companies tried to provide teletext service, either over modem or a UHF decoder to a home computer or - more bizarrely - as a read-only presentation done overnight when no other scheduled programming was being shown.
joezydeco|1 year ago
For a brief period in the 1980s a few companies tried to provide teletext service, either over modem or a UHF decoder to a home computer or - more bizarrely - as a read-only presentation done overnight when no other scheduled programming was being shown.
Keyfax in Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgs0kbxo68w
Keycom home service: https://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/history/Keycom.htm
Aloha|1 year ago
That said, there were several other competing standards offered at the same time including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_(teletext)
The issue of course - like everything else with standards adoption in the states, the decoder wasn't mandated to be included with TV sets.