Case Studies
Allan Dekker
Allan Dekker of TV*DATA TEXTTV ApS is a teletext solutions provider in Denmark with clients in Denmark, Norway and Greenland. He has been a customer of MRG for over 15 years and has always provided practical and innovative solutions that fully explore the capabilities of the technology he employs.
He uses the CT4 pc card which is a high quality teletext generator / inserter and ideal for use in private teletext applications such as small cable television services and other small information display applications.
TV-Data also employ the MRG DTP910 in-vision decoder to monitor teletext transmitted in a video signal or serial data stream. Selected text pages and subtitles are decoded and are overlaid onto the video image. Because the DTP910 always produces an analogue and a digital output, it can be used to convert digital to analogue or vice versa, giving maximum flexibility in any mixed set-up of sources and monitors.
A combination of CT4 cards and the DTP910 has provided TV-Data with a solution based on the Scala Information channel. This combines pictures and images on a carousel of teletext pages to provide advertising for local businesses, local services and or public services available in their area. Denmark is split into 98 local departments, all of which are attempting to increase their visibility through a government led initiative that allows them to showcase their area and the opportunities they provide, plus encourage them to be more responsive to local demands. TV-Data now have this solution installed at several cable television companies, large hotel chains and small hotels that offer up to 100 pages of teletext information.
Because the management of the content is so easy, the cable tv providers and the hotel groups maintain the content themselves. Typically they manage between 10 and 15 pages centrally but the small hotels maintain their pages at the reception front desk. In fact the Skallerup-klit holiday group have provided pages in three languages, Danish, English and Dutch. The numbers are impressive too, the cable television companies, Kanal Copenhagen and TV-ISHOJ (a community broadcaster) have 1 million viewers and 20,000 viewers respectively.
TV-Data have another interesting application of the CT4 which has been provided for the Dankespil website. They take a live data feed from the horse race courses in order to calculate betting odds. This information is then inserted via a Linux server into teletext through the CT4 card. Dankespil broadcast this content within their Dantoto pages in conjunction with live television coverage. This use of teletext is the perfect application for a dynamic real-time feed where prices are continually changing or updating and harks back to the early 80’s when MRG were one of the first companies to provide such a feed into the commodities markets of the British stock exchange.
