Reading about the Philips machine mentioned in #15 reminded me that we had a similar Grundig VCR that had a teletext decoder built in, and could burn subtitles on to recordings. It could also be used to bring teletext to non-text TV sets, although the picture was PAL, so nowhere near as nice to look at. It used a Panasonic G deck. I remember that it was an absolute pig to drive - the user interface was a real horror, so my parents just used it as a basic VCR - and it was very unreliable. I think we only got 2 or 3 years of use from it before giving up on it.
Recording teletext was possible on my Panasonic FS-88 S-VHS machine, but it relied on the correct setting of the picture sharpness control to get a reliably recoverable signal. Tapes had to be played back in the same machine for best results (I ended up with 2 or 3 of these machines eventually). Never managed it with any hint of reliability in any standard VHS machine - just not enough video bandwidth.
Never tried it on Betamax, but V2000 was slightly better than regular VHS, for what that's worth
I'd say that if you have a good video signal that gives reliable results on a teletext TV set, then the BBC Micro plus teletext adaptor is a good way to go. But then, I have those here, so I guess I would say that
. Saved images can be transferred via a serial cable to a PC and displayed on a BBC emulator, then captured as a screengrab in Windows. It would be time-consuming, but the results would look good. Otherwise, you might as well just photograph the screen of the TV. With a bit of experimentation, the results from that can actually be quite good. It just depends on what you want to achieve.
In years gone by, I remember manually creating copies of teletext pages character by character using a MODE7 editor that I wrote. Getting the graphics done was sometimes tricky, but it was a good way to learn new ways to do things with the limited teletext graphics characters. I still have them, and occasionally dig the disc out for a bit of nostalgia. I wish I'd made more, but it was extremely time-consuming - though a good way of passing the time as a bored teenager. Those were the days
