[Technologist]

Not wanting to divert too much from 30 year of itv -
But one effect of the new contractors was the weakening of Engineering coordination between companies...
so things were not rolled out across all companies/ regions.
for instance Carlton just transmitted PDC code which said "use the VCRs clock"
which was not really much good - but lit the PDC led on the front of the VCR!!!!!

The concepts of Additional services = Oracle/Teletext ltd, and also Datacast etc
and Ancillary Services (programme related) - "4tel etc"  subtitles (Access services)
Recording control etc  (and PresFax, Adavails etc) ...  were very important in the formation of Digital Tv services.
The UK was unique in splitting its Teletext services into these groupings... and sub groupings 

BTW Westward did some interesting stuff ... but was "below the radar"
while 4tel was not!
Teletext costs money run -  the only Teletext company which even really made a Profit
was Teletext Ltd who for two years paid more tax that the total Ceefax budget!
Oracle was also profitable but not to that extent! 
So most Itv companies were not really that interested.

[Stooky Bill]

PDC was patchy on ITV, there was a website at the time that kept tracks of what broadcaster was doing what and it's still online:
625.uk.com 

The most fascinating part of the ITV PDC debacle is how against it HTV were, yet Westcountry (whose playout was done by HTV) were the first to enable PDC

Yes, although of course HTV had no say in what their clients broadcast. 

It's curious that Westcountry was so far ahead of the rest of the network in such things. I wonder if that was because it was a totally new and modern set up and them and NTL were keen on pushing the technology

[Technologist]

One of ITVs top engineers chaired the EBU group that was writing the PDC spec ..
…Norman Green ..until he left …the BBC took over
www.etsi.org 

But despite PDC allowing the adverts before during and after a programme to be recorded
(Incidentally you cannot do this in DVB !! …)
Which I would have thought was very attractive to them … (but none did)
It was only the most technical minded who did it..
As the transmission automation companies are not very eager to provide the information required
(or when they did …to get it right) …so it was not an off the shelf option !

[Stooky Bill]

One of the responsibilities in a past job was to check PDC codes as they went out. They were so unreliable they even put a little matrix screen thing in the stack to prominately display them. They still got missed

[Technologist]

...... because the playout system did not preserve them Or the network directors edited the schedule and deleted or did not add the PDC codes ... so we put the display in the stack to remind them!!!!

This was typical of the lack of support that play out systems/ work flow gave to PDC (and for many years DVB SI P/F )
- with a a move/change of automation the PDC codes were safe from Network Directors editing
....which was a great step forward
- which is why there are few issues with DVB accurate record which uses the same information....
But i still think Red Bee uses a stand alone system not provided by the playout manfacturer
But P/F is a lot easier than PDC... it requires less clairvoyance! (which may be why ITV companies had a issue)

Just to give you an example - one system changed its PDC current day at 1pm local not Midnight UTC....
(reason was that too much happened at midnight so they moved some to noon - but that was a bit busy...
so they moved to 1pm ... sorted out by doing things at say 1am less to go wrong then!)
another version of the same system omitted December so November had 31 more days!
(Months 0-11 not 1-12 at different parts of program but no Days<32)