archive of (german) online teletexts

Or videotext, as we used to call it.

This repo uses github actions to scrape teletext pages from web sources and converts the html into easy digestible json/unicode files.

The data is stored in docs/snapshots in a new-line delimited json file for each station.

scraped stations:

station	since	type	link
✔ 3sat	2022-01-28	html with font-map	https://blog.3sat.de/ttx/
✔ ARD	2022-01-28	html	https://www.ard-text.de/
✔ NDR	2022-01-27	html	https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/videotext/index.html
✔ n-tv	2022-01-28	json	https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/teletext/
✔ SR	2022-01-28	html	https://www.saartext.de/
✔ WDR	2022-01-28	html	https://www1.wdr.de/wdrtext/index.html
✔ ZDF	2022-01-27	html	https://teletext.zdf.de/teletext/zdf/
✔ ZDFinfo	2022-01-27	html	https://teletext.zdf.de/teletext/zdfinfo/
✔ ZDFneo	2022-01-27	html	https://teletext.zdf.de/teletext/zdfneo/

⭐ view it ⭐

Setup a python env, install requirements.txt and call python show.py.

You can browse pages horizontally and vertically, meaning through history. The snapshots are loaded from the git repo in the back. There are about 3 snapshots per day.

format

Each line is one complete json object. Each file starts with a simple line like this. All timestamps are UTC.

{"scraper":"3sat","timestamp":"2022-02-05T04:09:36"}

Then each page starts like this:

{"page":100,"sub_page":1,"timestamp":"2022-02-05T04:09:36"}

and is followed by lines of content like this:

[["wb","  "],["rb","🬦🬚🬋🬋🬩🬚🬹 "],["bb","🬞🬭🬏 🬭🬭 🬻🬭                     "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","▐█🬱🬵🬆🬵█ "],["bb","█🬒🬎🬉🬆🬨▌█🬂 "],["rb","                    "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","▐█🬝🬟🬜██ "],["bb","🬁🬬🬱🬞🬜🬬▌█  "],["rb","                    "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","▐█🬬█🬱🬁█ "],["bb","🬬🬹🬝🬉🬺🬜▌🬬🬜 "],["rb","                    "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","▐🬲🬁🬎🬎🬞█                               "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","🬉🬎🬌🬋🬋🬎🬎                               "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂🬂 "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","502 "],["bb","Köln will Benin-Bronzen           "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","    "],["bb","zurückgeben                       "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","401 "],["bb","Wetterwerte und Prognosen         "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","525 "],["bb","Theater und Konzerte Österreich   "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","555 "],["bb","Buchtipps und Literatur           "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭 "]]
[["wb","    "],["rb","Jetzt in 3sat                       "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","  "],["wb","04:39 Kurzstrecke mit Pierre M.     "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","        "],["wb","Krause ................. 343  "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","  "],["wb","05:01 Kurzstrecke mit Pierre M.     "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","        "],["wb","Krause ................. 344  "]]
[["wb","                                        "]]
[["wb","  "],["rb","🬋🬋🬋 "],["bb","Nachrichten     200 Sport         "]]
[["wb","  "],["bb","112 Deutschland     300 Programm      "]]
[["wb","  "],["bb","150 Österreich      400 Wetter/Verkehr"]]
[["wb","  "],["bb","151 Schweiz         500 Kultur        "]]
[["wb","                                        "]]
[["wb","                                        "]]

Each content line consists of one or several blocks with color and text. The two-letter color code represents foreground and background colors (black, red, green, blue, magenta, cyan, white).

A third argument might be in one block which would then be a link to another table:

[["wb", 101, "Seite 101"]]
[["wb", [101, 5], "Seite 101/5"]]

If you can see the graphic blocks in the above example you have a font installed that supports the unicode symbols for legacy computing starting at 0x1bf00. If not, you can install a font like unscii.

The original character codes from the teletext pages are converted to the unicode mappings via these tables.

technicals

• Scraping is currently done about every 8 hours. I'd love to leave this running forever but need to watch the growing repository size. The alpha version exploded in only a few weeks time.

• To walk the historical commits look at file docs/snapshots/zdf.ndjson. It's been there since the beginning. For example, to list all commit timestamps and hashes:

  git log --reverse --pretty='%aI %H' -- docs/snapshots/zdf.ndjson

  (However, the first 50 or so commits are replayed from another repo and the timestamps do not fit the snapshot timestamps.)

  A more convenient way is to read the contents of docs/snapshots/_timestamps.ndjson which holds each snapshot commit hash and the actual snapshot timestamp.

  Knowing the commit hashes, one can read the files of each commit via:

  git archive <hash> docs/snapshots > files.tar

  Each file contains the actual timestamp of the snapshot.

• Not all special characters are decoded for each station. Currently they are replaced by ?.

• Before 2022-02-21, the ZDF recordings have an encoding problem which i couldn't correctly fix afterwards. Parsing the ndjson files will actually result in some json decoding errors because of a spooky sequence like 96 c2 00 0a after the letter 'Ö'. Ignoring json errors and skipping those lines works. You'll just miss some lines in the page content. However, other stupid character sequences are in there as well and some lines might have more than 40 characters. Also the block graphics might be expurgated.

related stuff

Oh boy, look what else exists on the web:

• https://archive.teletextarchaeologist.org
• http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/
• https://www.teletextart.com/
• https://galax.xyz/TELETEXT/
• https://zxnet.co.uk/teletext/viewer/

TODO

• there is at least one other character set with thinner box graphics. it's not supported by unicode but it would be good to store at least the charset switch
• unrecognized chars on NTV 218
• ZDF scraper report in commit message only shows pages added

TODO other sites

• SWR https://www.swrfernsehen.de/videotext/index.html

  They only deliver gif files, boy!

• KIKA https://www.kika.de/kikatext/kikatext-start100.html

  Images once more

• Seven-One https://www.sevenonemedia.de/tv/portfolio/teletext/teletext-viewer

  This is the Pro7/Sat1 empire. They have a lot of channels. All images :(

• VOX https://www.vox.de/cms/service/footer-navigation/teletext.html

  Requires .. aehm ... Flash 🤣

beyond the borders

• CT https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/teletext/ct/

  Images

• Swiss Teletext https://mobile.txt.ch/

  Does not really seem to work - with my script-blockers anyways

• SRF https://www.teletext.ch/

  Images

• ORF https://teletext.orf.at/

  JSON API delivering ... image-urls

• HRT https://teletekst.hrt.hr/

  Images

• RTVSLO https://teletext.rtvslo.si/

  Images

• NOS https://nos.nl/teletekst

• Supersport https://www.supersport.hr/teletext/661

• RTVFBiH https://teletext.rtvfbih.ba/

  Images

• ?? https://www.teletext.hu/

  Many things i cannot read

• TRT https://www.trt.net.tr/Kurumsal/Teletext.aspx

  Not getting it to work

• Markiza https://markizatext.sk/

  Not getting it to work, either

• RTP https://www.rtp.pt/wportal/teletexto/

  Images

• SVT https://www.svt.se/text-tv/101

  Images