I'm almost certain the route taken by the BBC would have been to generate the Teletext on their broadcast quality gear and record it to video tape for reliable and repeatable results, rather than have a prototype Acorn machine behind the scenes that would need the listing typing in or loading from tape (or custom ROM) each time the power was cycled.it wouldn't surprise me if there is a genuine prototype board (in some stage of development) under the table even if not in the case.
I think it's reasonable to assume that there wouldn't have been any readily available prototypes until after June '81, and for one to be able to show a program listing in Mode 7, it would need quite a few subsystems to be working together for this to happen, such as minimal OS, BASIC, keyboard, storage of some kind, RGB video, RAM, SA7070, etc, which I think would have meant the BBC would have needed a quite late, more advanced prototype.
Compare this against a readily available and well known system that had been at the BBC for perhaps five or more years? Plus, the various different bits of dummy content could be recorded back-to-back on video tape and easily shown to the producers and researchers to sign off. I think they'd have done this for the publication photoshoots. For the actual programme broadcasts, I think it's well known that there was someone operating a real machine off camera, although at this point there would have been early production machines available.
Statistics: Posted by baz4096 — Tue Nov 18, 2025 10:20 am