Nick's Electronics Launches "World's Only Standalone Teletext Decoder with HDMI Output"
Designed to blend the old and the new, the device is a combination FPGA development board and fully-functional Teletext decoder.
FPGA designer Nick, of Nick's Electronics, has launched what is claimed to be "the world's only standalone Teletext decoder with HDMI output," blending the old and the new into an FPGA-powered development kit.
Launched in the UK in 1974 as a broadcast implementation of videotex, Teletext has long since been surpassed by other higher-resolution and multimedia information delivery systems — but the technology still has its fans, particularly in Europe where many Teletext services still run. Nick is just such a fan, and one who found his needs not being met by others' work on keeping Teletext alive.
"I wanted to create a Teletext decoder which does not depend on obsolete components and has a high-quality, modern, video output connection," Nick explains. "The unique combination of hardware features needed made existing FPGA development boards unsuitable. Limited stocks of old obsolete decoder chips are still available but these only have low-quality composite video outputs and usually only work with PAL TVs."
"[The board is] an FPGA development board designed for the application of decoding WST (World System Teletext) and displaying it on a HDMI monitor/TV. The board is pre-programmed with my open source VHDL-Teletext firmware and all you need is a micro USB power supply, HDMI or DVI monitor, and a source of teletext data with composite video out such as a Raspberry Pi running VBIT2 or a satellite receiver. 50/60Hz output and choice of 576p and 800x600 resolutions for compatibility with international TVs.
"The board is suitable for all manner of FPGA projects. The Altera MAX 10 FPGA has 8k logic elements which is enough for complex hobby FPGA projects. In addition to HDMI connectivity and the built-in keypad and buttons, 23 I/O are connected to headers to allow connection to other devices, providing the potential for diverse applications such as a Telesoftware decoder or a replica of an old microcomputer."
The board is now available from Nick's Electronics' Tindie store, for $175 including keypad for page selection and interaction; the source code, meanwhile, can be found on GitHub.