Rowby Text

Rowby Text was the name for Rowby Television's teletext and information service.

The system was first used on Rowby Television on April 25th, though officially it first started transitting on April 13th along with Rowby itself, however, these transmissions were all test signals. When it did launch on April 25th, it only contained 35 pages. Rowby Text is the channels primary source for televisual subtitles used for the deaf.

Rowby Text is currently the latest teletext system to lauch, however, it is definite that the system will not remain for long as it will retire in 2012 when the anolouge switchoff. Rowby also offers a digital text service on platforms such as Freeview and Sky.

The current Rowby Text service holds info on a wide range of topics, such as News, Sport, Weather, TV Listings and Business. These pages are kept extremely up to date and are usually the first to report a breaking story or headline.

It closed following Rowby's expiration of the London weekday franchise at 23.59 on 28 February 2009.

Analogue
Rowby Text uses the World System Teletext standard (orginally CEPT1) which is also used be the BBC's Ceefax. Like all teletext systems, text and simple graphics are transmitted in-band with the actual picture signal, and decoded by the controller circuit. Almost all televisions now sold in the United Kingdom come equipped with the decoder hardware.

Digital
The digital service, like Clydern Text, carries a DVB-VBI stream, so via Sky, it can hold a multiscreen display.

"Live Screen" use of Teletext

 * (for more on this see Live Screen)

Televisions that cannot access teletext can still view limied pages of the Rowby Text content, via the Live Screen programme. Occaisionally selected pages of the service (normally news) are transmitted as a normal television picture. So, through this viewers can watch the teletext pages on any set, however, there is no interactivity with the service, or choice of pages, which to some extent is not the real intention of the service.

The music played in the background of Live Screen is a typically collaboration of easy listening, calm music.

Live Screen only uses the Rowby Text fill in when there is a loss of information to be shown on the normal overnight service, or if there is a technical difficulty during the daytime which can on average take some time to resolve, it is possible that the teletext service can be used as a fill in.

It is possible that in later times the Rowby Text fill in will be replaced with a syndicated broadcast of the Taff Media News Channel.

The set of pages rolling on the service, (usually reffered to Text News) are also accessible at any time of the day via Rowby Text page 576 on an analouge teletext television set.

Trivia

 * Most pages are found by using the 3 main letters of the service, and given the number a they would be found on a telephone handset. eg:
 * Journal Text, page 576, letters JRN.
 * Subtitles, page 782, letters SUB. (subtitles are also found on 888.)


 * Rowby_text is the digital version of the teletext service, found on Freeview channel 106.