Antiope (teletext) - Use

Use

Commercial broadcasting of Antiope began on Antenne 2 in 1979. To publicise the service, pages were even transmitted en clair instead of the test card (compare the BBC's Pages from Ceefax). TF1 and FR3 both also began to broadcast Antiope content from the early 1980s. Antiope decoding was initially by set-top boxes connected to the television by a SCART cable. Grundig France began to sell TVs with integrated decoders from 1983, followed by other manufacturers.

Antenne 2 began using the system to broadcast teletext subtitles for the hard-of-hearing in 1983, with three programmes subtitled by the end of the year. The number rose to 15 programmes across the three channels in 1984, and 30 in 1985.

Attempts had been made to sell the system internationally, including test broadcasts in the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1980, CBS had lobbied U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) directly to make Antiope the teletext standard for the United States. However by 1986, all these efforts had failed. Across Europe 9 million sets had been sold equipped to receive teletext based on the UK standard; whereas in France, the only country using Antiope, sales had only reached 100,000. Manufacture of Antiope-equipped TV sets ceased in 1987, and in 1989 broadcasts began in the rival European standard World System Teletext. For a while the two services were broadcast in parallel, but Antiope broadcasts finally ceased in the early 1990s.

Ironically, although the transport protocols were different, much of the on-screen functionality of Antiope was recreated in the extended so-called Hi-Text Level 2.5 version of the European standard, first broadcast in 1994 by the bilingual French-German channel ARTE.