Back in March, I picked up a load of old VHS tapes which managed to yield a whole host of archive gems. However, in amongst the curios there was a lot of less interesting material - namely films. Whilst, yes, there were some fine films in there (a lot of Bond), they're all readily available in the modern age, so don't really fall under my remit of forgotten or rarely seen TV.
However, the thought of simply skipping tapes which went way back to 1983 seemed a bit of a shame. Whilst I had no use for them, surely someone else would, right? And, thankfully, yes, there's a wonderful man known only by his full name of Jason Robertson who is one of the authorities on retrieving teletext from old VHS and Betamax tapes.
I duly packaged up a number of tapes and sent them to Jason where they proudly took their place in his mammoth queue (he's currently swamped with tapes that they tower about 6ft tall) and, finally, the first fruits of my tapes have begun to surface. A selection of what Jason's harvested from Ceefax on 23/06/1983 - yep, 34 years and a day ago - can be seen below, but the full Ceefax service for the day can be accessed at:
Desktop: http://www.uniquecodeanddata.co.uk/teletext76/bbc1_1983-06-23/
Mobile: http://archive.teletextart.co.uk/bbc1_1983-06-23/
News (click the pictures for bigger versions)
Wimbledon and Sport
Weather
TV
Top 40 Music Chart
Telesoftware
More of Jason's results from digging deep into the signals of dusty old tapes can be found over at: uniquecodeanddata.co.uk/teletext76