Softel USA - Products for the Digital Age

Softel was started over 15 years ago to specialise in Teletext technology and it continues to provide a one-stop shop for anyone starting or upgrading a Teletext system. Today, the range of Softel Teletext products spans from the smallest PC card to systems providing over 20 channels of Teletext managed from a central operations centre. No two Teletext systems are identical, and Softel's extensive experience and expertise has a vital role to play at the planning stage of a new Teletext transmission operation. In each instance, Softel considers a wide range of possible configurations and options to ensure optimum productivity and resilience.

The success of the Softel policy to supply complete customer support is reflected in the company's work for broadcasters throughout the world. Whether a customer is based in Singapore, Australia or the USA, distance is no object to those Softel personnel who provide technical support as part of a total turnkey package.

There are a number of points to consider when planning a new Teletext operation which will influence the solution proposed:

1. The budget - in most cases a Teletext service is created to achieve one of two things; either as a business to make money for the operator or as a public service to provide information to the TV viewer. In both cases there is likely to be a budget set for the project and it is important for Softel to offer a solution to fit this constraint.

2. The number of Teletext services required - this is one of the most significant criteria to consider and generally makes the difference between a simple system and one requiring more design effort. A single channel Teletext system is used to provide Teletext on one TV channel. Multi-channel Teletext is used where different Teletext services are required for different channels even though there may be some pages common to all channels.

3. The frequency of page updates - this is a key indicator of the processing power needed by a Teletext system and in most cases will determine the number of editorial staff that are necessary to keep the service updated. Low budget CATV and Satellite Teletext services may only make changes to pages two or three times a week whilst other channels carrying news, sports and financial could change over 500 pages every hour of the working day.

4. The location of editing staff and of the VBI insertion hardware - the geographic location of the various parts of a Teletext system is an important part of the design of a system. In the simplest installations the Teletext hardware and the editing staff will operate in the same room, however it is common for the transmission hardware, central operations and some or all of the editing staff to be sited in different locations.

5. Hardware resilience - although Teletext systems are generally very reliable, hardware failures in PC's and insertion units do occur and the Teletext operator has to decide to what extent he can tolerate component failure. If non-stop 24 hour Teletext transmission is essential then master/standby Teletext generator units should form part of the design. This will ensure that Teletext pages are broadcast at all times. If it is also essential that the Teletext pages must always be up to date, the system design should include a fault tolerant Teletext database.

6. Automatic page updates - where there is a requirement to carry real time information in the Teletext service such as stock market prices or airport arrivals, the system design has to include communication gateways to handle the incoming data.

We would ask that anyone wanting advice from Softel on Teletext system design answer these questions on the form attached and fax it back to Softel.

Flair is Softel's Teletext page editing software and is used with all of Softel's different Teletext solutions. Flair runs on a PC under Windows (95, 98 or NT), and provides full WYSIWYG features including edit facilities, word wrap, and mouse drawing. It also includes specialised features such as a template facility, multiple block protection, spell checking and ASCII text import. Flair communicates with Teletext systems using a LAN, an RS23, or modem connection.

The majority of Teletext users find that a Softel Cyclone system can be adapted to meet their requirements. Cyclone is a modular system comprising Flair editing workstations, PC database servers, Teletext Data Generators and Communications Gateways which are interconnected via a local or wide area network.

Softel have recently introduced an entry level solution called standalone Cyclone where the Teletext database and data generator are installed in the same rackmount unit. Standalone Cyclone is designed to be operational within five minutes of opening the box by connecting one or more Flair workstations to it.

The SE3055 is a rackmount data inserter designed to insert up to four independant VBI Teletext data inputs into a composite video signal. The SE3055/W watchdog inserter is designed to insert a master Teletext data source into video unless the master signal fails when it will switch to a standby data source.

The SE3005 is a rackmount inserter designed to insert VBI Teletext data into serial digital video.

The SE3027 is a Teletext InVision decoder that converts a specified Teletext page (or multi-page) into a PAL signal suitable for re-broadcast.

Flair page grabber is a PC card and Windows software that is used to view off-air Teletext pages. When the Flair page grabber is installed in a Flair edit PC, off-air Teletext pages from an aerial input may be immediately transferred into the Flair document Window.

Broadcasters wishing to publish information from their Teletext service onto a Web site may use one or both of the following Softel Internet products:

Spider is designed to copy specified Teletext information into pre-designed HTML template pages. Spider monitors any off-air Teletext service using the Flair page grabber card and when it finds that a page has been updated it automatically re-writes the corresponding HTML page. Alternatively Softel have developed a Java applet that is downloaded into Web browsers, allowing viewers to view Teletext pages in their original format.

Developers looking to develop their own Teletext applications can make use of three Softel OEM products:

Intext is an ISA PC card that comes with programming manual and Windows NT drivers. Intext is a Teletext data generator card & video inserter with onboard memory for each of the VBI lines which may be written to by third party applications under interrupt control. Intext is ideal for data broadcast or other VBI data applications. PAL and NTSC versions are available.

Elan is a self-contained 3000 page Teletext PC ISA card designed to provide a full Teletext service using an on-board processor. A PC application has to load the card with page data on startup and has to support housekeeping tasks such as multipage set control, but otherwise the Elan is self sufficient.

SE3048 is the 2U rackmount Teletext generator used by Cyclone, but it can equally be used by any third party system providing a TCP/IP style page interface. The SE3048 supports most forms of Teletext add-ons such as EACEM, EPG, Level 2.5 page data and packet 31 data broadcast.