BBC Red Button

BBC Red Button
BBC Red Button+ logo
Launched	September 1999 (1999-09)
Owned by	BBC
Picture format	576i (16:9 SDTV) 1080i (HDTV)
Audience share	0.10% (All BBC Red Button feeds) (September 2015 (2015-09), BARB)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Formerly called	BBC Text (1999-2001) BBCi (2001-2008)
Sister channel(s)	BBC One BBC Two BBC Four BBC News BBC Parliament CBBC CBeebies
Website	www.bbc.co.uk/redbutton
Availability
Terrestrial
Freeview	Channel 601
Satellite
Sky	Channel 980
Freesat	Channel 981
Cable
Virgin Media	Channel 991
Streaming media
TVPlayer	Watch live (UK only)

BBC Red Button is a branding used for digital interactive television services provided by the BBC, and broadcast in the United Kingdom. The services replaced Ceefax, the BBC's analogue teletext service. The service can be accessed via Digital terrestrial television (DTT) (DVB-T), satellite television (DVB-S) and cable television (DVB-C).

The service was launched in September 1999 as BBC Text. It was relaunched in November 2001 under the BBCi brand and operated under this name until late 2008, when it was rebranded as BBC Red Button. The "red button" name refers to the common interface on remote controls for digital televisions and set-top boxes, a red push-button which launches digital teletext services.

Although initially marketed as a spectacular new form of television, by 2008 this had given way to positioning iTV as ‘everyday’. This was due in part to the institutional landscape of television in the UK.

BBC Text originally launched on digital terrestrial services in September 1999, and was later introduced on satellite and cable platforms. In the first phase, the service was created using content migrated from the existing analogue teletext service, Ceefax. A digital text service had been available since the launch of digital terrestrial television in November 1998, but the BBC Text service was not publicly launched until November 1999, due to a lack of availability of compatible set-top boxes.

BBC Text was considerably more advanced than Ceefax, in that it offered a richer visual interface, with the possibility of photographic images and designed graphics (as opposed to Ceefax graphics which were composed of simple blocks of colour). BBC Text also enabled channel association, the ability for the user to retain their selected television channel visible in one section of the screen whilst viewing the text service, in contrast to Ceefax, which could only be viewed as a full-screen display, or as a semitransparent overlay (i.e. opaque blocks of colour on top of the television channel, with the black background now transparent; not 'translucent blocks of colour with a translucent black background') above the television picture. The original text service had no return path, this being made available in later phases.