Because teletext is much less developed in the US than it is in the UK – the concept was invented and pioneered here, after all – there is still spare capacity on the blanking lines in the television raster put out by most US transmitters (the system is pretty much only used for captioning for the deaf in the US), and a Keene, New Hampshire computer catalogue sales company, En Technology Inc, has come up with an innovative new application for some of the capacity. It has come up with a $100 board for a home computer than can pick up signals on the blanking lines directly rather than having them fed via an adapted television.The owners of En Technology also own PC Connection Inc, and they dreamed the idea up as a means of delivering today’s bulky software direct to their customers. They also plan to use their technology with another company they’ve started, PCTV Inc, which produces Computer Chronicles on the US Public Broadcasting System. The system could be used to enable publishers send whole catalogues or m agazines to subscribers in minutes, or advertisers to send details on products or coupons that people could print out. The board, code-named Malachi, enables the computer to pick up and store a 3Mb software program or a high-resolution video clip in four minutes, against an hour or so over a modem link – and it can restrict reception to a single user, so it could be used to send music for storing on recordable compact disks. It hits the shops in the autumn, by which time En plans to have transmission capability in television stations that reach most of the US.
