Singapore Teleview or known as Camp-Camp View or Ke Pik was a Singaporean

videotex Videotex (or interactive videotex) was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typi ...

t service. In the mid 1980s, the Telecom Authority of

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

entered into a joint venture development with

GEC Marconi Marconi Electronic Systems (MES), or GEC-Marconi as it was until 1998, was the defence arm of General Electric Company (GEC). It was demerged from GEC and bought by British Aerospace (BAe) on 30 November 1999 to form BAE Systems. GEC then ren ...

in the UK to develop a photo-videotext public service. Selected engineers were sent to the UK to work within the Marconi development team stationed at

Fleet, Hampshire Fleet is a town and civil parish in the Hart District of Hampshire, England, centred 38.2 miles (61.5 km) WSW of London and 13 miles (21 km) east of Basingstoke. It is the major town of the Hart District, and has large technology business a ...

, England. Singapore was the first country in the world to launch an interactive information service to the public which included photographic images. The service started trials during late 1987 using specifically designed terminals. Controlled trials had been conducted since 1987 as the infrastructure was installed and trialed successfully. It finally went into full public service in 1991. Subscribers connected to the Teleview, now-defunct, service by SingTel, via a dial up connection initially by 1200–2400 bit

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

s (

v.22bis ''V.'' is the debut novel of Thomas Pynchon, published in 1963. It describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in New York with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Who ...

) and then later via 9600-14400 kbit/s modems. Pages with photographic images were sent to the terminal by Full Field Teletext transmissions from dedicated data inserters/ UHF TV transmitters. Subscribers initially paid no time based usage fee for this service. However, later charges, on top of telephone line charges were levied. A later development from Teleview provided an interfaced connection to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, subscribers were given access to the Internet via a text-only terminal; email was accessed by

Pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts ...

, and webpages were viewed by Lynx. Subsequently, Teleview was rendered obsolete, and

SingNet Singapore Telecommunications Limited, commonly known as Singtel, is a Singaporean telecommunications conglomerate and one of the four major telcos operating in the country. The company is the largest mobile network operator in Singapore with ...

started offering to the Internet via

Serial Line Internet Protocol The Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) is an encapsulation of the Internet Protocol designed to work over serial ports and router connections. It is documented in . On personal computers, SLIP has largely been replaced by the Point-to-Point ...

/ Point-to-Point Protocol (SLIP/PPP) over modem.

System

The information storage and delivery system was based upon GPT4190 computers coupled to dial in modem for public to access and via

microwave link Microwave transmission is the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300MHz to 300GHz(1 m - 1 mm wavelength) of the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwave signals are normally lim ...

to a UHF TV transmitter fitted with Full Field Teletext inserters. Transmission of lower level protocol data and user terminal management control was via telephone V22 modem. High level data such as geometric and photographic displays sent exclusively by full field teletext with interchange control and handshaking via V22 modem. The service profile is based upon extensions to the existing CEPT Videotext Services Recommendations T/CD 6-1, as defined in Teleview Videotext Service Profile and Data Standard Ref; 7630/DS/1 1987.

Terminal

The terminal was based upon two Motorola 68000 processors: one as a general main computer and control and the other as a video processor interfaced to VRAM video memory with

shift register A shift register is a type of digital circuit using a cascade of flip-flops where the output of one flip-flop is connected to the input of the next. They share a single clock signal, which causes the data stored in the system to shift from one loc ...

to output. Another processor, the TMS 7000, acted as control for the full field teletext, RF tuning and packet decoding for 8 bit data transfer to the main processor, while a Micronas MAS2122 Modem

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in one or more integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on the mo ...

handled the telephone interface. RF Tuning was achieved by

Telefunken Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company'). The name "Telefunken" ap ...

multiband tuner, voltage tuned via SP5000 with the channel selection supplied by the TMS 7000. This tuner with agc IF detection provides the composite video to the data slicer ( TMS 3556) and data detector/converter ( TMS 3551) under control from the TMS 7000 ( TMS 77C82 mask programmed version). Furthermore, the main processor operated as a computer running MetaComCo BASIC, with keyboard entry via an infrared coupled standard

qwerty QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden t ...

keyboard with additional keys to select

teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

or PC modes.

References

{{Videotex Videotex Pre–World Wide Web online services Internet in Singapore Internet properties established in 1991

System

Terminal

See also

References