BBCi is the brand name for the BBC's interactive television services. The name was introduced in November 2001 and originally encompassed the corporation's online services, which were returned to their original name, bbc.co.uk, from May 6, 2004. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Corporate logo of the British Broadcasting Corporation The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom. ... Interactive television describes any number of efforts to allow viewers to interact with television content as they view. ... 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and also: The International Year of the Volunteer The United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations Events January January 1 - A black monolith measuring approximately nine feet tall appears in Seattles Magnuson Park, placed by an anonymous... BBC Screenshot as of 17th August 2005 bbc. ... May 6 is the 125126th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (127th in leap years). ... 2004(MMIV) is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The services are broadcast on digital cable, digital satellite and digital terrestrial television (Freeview). They include text and video based services, and enhanced television programmes which offer extra information, video or quizzes. Digital cable is a term for a type of cable digital television that delivers more channels than possible with analog cable by using digital video compression. ... Satellite television is television delivered by way of orbiting communications satellites located 37,000 km (22,300 miles) above the earth’s equator. ... Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV or DTT) is an implementation of digital technology to provide a greater number of channels (SDTV) and/or better quality of picture (EDTV, HDTV) and sound (AC3, Dolby Digital) through a conventional aerial instead of a satellite dish or cable connection. ... Freeview is a free-to-air digital television service in the United Kingdom broadcast from terrestrial transmitters using the DVB-T standard. ...

BBCi, the new Digital Teletext Service for the BBC, replaces most of CEEFAX, the oldest teletext service in the world. However, CEEFAX can still be received via analogue broadcasts. Additionally on Freeview it provides a service allowing viewers to access a quarter sized video of BBC Parliament. A BBC Ceefax page from 10 September 1999 Ceefax (phonetic for See Facts) is the BBCs teletext information service. ... A BBC Ceefax page from the 10th September 1999 Teletext is an information retrieval service provided by television broadcast companies. ... BBC Parliament is a British television channel from the BBC. It broadcasts live and recorded coverage of the British House of Commons and House of Lords, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. ...

Initially launched in 1999, the BBCi digital text service has been criticised for taking a long time to load and being hard to navigate. Navigating to lottery results requires navigating through many submenus, whilst on CEEFAX users could enter simply enter the page number 555. The BBC has attempted to rectify these problems by reintroducing page numbers - on November 10, 2004 they introduced CEEFAX-style page numbers on Digital Satellite and page numbers on the Freeview service were introduced in December 2004. The page numbers used are the same as those of CEEFAX, although BBCi exclusive pages are given a 4 digit number. November 10 is the 314th day of the year (315th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 51 days remaining. ... 2004(MMIV) is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... December is the twelfth and last month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... 2004(MMIV) is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

In September 2005, BBCi launched an update to the interactivity available from the BBC's Radio channels on Freeview. Originally only Radiotext was available. After the update, users could access information about the programme, schedules, news, sport and weather.

The same team behind the BBC's digital text service also launched the early incarnations of the BBC's Interactive Wimbledon and Interactive Open Golf services in 2000, which were awarded an Interactive Bafta that year.

See also

• MHEG 5 Programming Language for Freeview
• OpenTV C-based programming Language for digital satellite
• Liberate Technologies HTML-based programming language for digital cable.

MHEG-5 is a standard devised for the middleware of digital teletext services in the United Kingdom. ... OpenTV (NASDAQ: OPTV) is an interactive television company founded in 1996. ...

External link

• Guide to BBCi