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Do the colour buttons always do the same thing?

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Brian Gaff

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Feb 2, 2024, 5:24:56 AMFeb 2
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I notice that on some channels it says press the red button for this or
green for that, but quite often pressing these buttons appears to do nothing
at all. I guess this may well be because its some kind of inaccessible
content that we blind would not be able to access, but looking through
channels I do see things called BBC red button, and wondered what was going
on exactly?
Brian

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David Woolley

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Feb 2, 2024, 9:25:25 AMFeb 2
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On 02/02/2024 10:24, Brian Gaff wrote:
> I notice that on some channels it says press the red button for this or
> green for that, but quite often pressing these buttons appears to do nothing
> at all. I guess this may well be because its some kind of inaccessible
> content that we blind would not be able to access, but looking through
> channels I do see things called BBC red button, and wondered what was going
> on exactly?
>

I believe these are interpreted by scripting sent to the device, and
their meaning is a matter of design convention, not something built into
the device.

Woody

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Feb 2, 2024, 11:21:52 AMFeb 2
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On Fri 02/02/2024 10:24, Brian Gaff wrote:
> I notice that on some channels it says press the red button for this or
> green for that, but quite often pressing these buttons appears to do nothing
> at all. I guess this may well be because its some kind of inaccessible
> content that we blind would not be able to access, but looking through
> channels I do see things called BBC red button, and wondered what was going
> on exactly?
> Brian
>

Red button on older TVs on BBC channels give your Freeview text.
Red button on modern/smart in theory goes straight to iPlayer but only
when it is available.
Green will get rid of the iPlayer option if it is showing on the screen.
Yellow is supposed to be an exit but......
I've never seen blue used!

Mark Carver

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Feb 2, 2024, 11:54:03 AMFeb 2
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Green (if pressed when the appropriate prompt appears) will fire up
iplayer, and start playing the programme from the start for you.

Davey

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Feb 2, 2024, 11:59:47 AMFeb 2
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Green, at least on my Humax, shrinks the BBC Red button screen to
nothing, and then shows the full BBC screen including subtitles, but
another press of the Green button will restore the Red button screen as
it was.
I found once that calling Red button by the name of iPlayer causes all
sorts of confusion, iPlayer needs an internet connection, Red button is
available on Freeview OTA.

Yellow and blue I only use as Humax buttons.

That's my two pence worth.

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alan_m

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Feb 2, 2024, 1:56:31 PMFeb 2
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On 02/02/2024 16:21, Woody wrote:
On my receiver/PVR the coloured buttons do different things on different
menu screens. When watching TV the coloured buttons are used as
shortcuts to various receiver/PVR functions.
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Blueshirt

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Feb 2, 2024, 4:39:51 PMFeb 2
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Woody wrote:
>
> Red button on older TVs on BBC channels give your Freeview text.
> Red button on modern/smart in theory goes straight to iPlayer but
> only when it is available. Green will get rid of the iPlayer
> option if it is showing on the screen. Yellow is supposed to be an
> exit but...... I've never seen blue used!

Originally the four coloured buttons were part of the "teletext"
services. You would use them on "Ceefax" and "Oracle" to jump
straight to certain 'pages'. Teletext pages [generally] had four
'titles' at the bottom of the page in the four different colours,
clicking the relevant coloured button on the remote control took you
quickly to the corresponding teletext page. So all of the four
coloured buttons would have been in use back then as I think that's
what they were designed for, teletext navigation.

Brian Gaff

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Feb 3, 2024, 6:23:51 AMFeb 3
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No me neither, Green is sometime announced by the announcer something like
if any of the issues covered affect you press your green button, which then
seems to be either blank or just a message text section updated. It seems
to me that most so called accessible sets cannot read it.
Brian


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Brian Gaff

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Feb 3, 2024, 6:25:55 AMFeb 3
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Hmm, I have on occasion found that red works on sets with no internet
connection and often this is because its being run on a spare channel like a
loop.
Brian

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Brian Gaff

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Feb 3, 2024, 6:32:33 AMFeb 3
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So the answer is basically no then!

It is indeed unfortunate that when designing the new text system they did
not learn lessons from the old system where the text was readable by simple
text to speech readers. The current system is obviously, or it would have
been in accessible sets like my samsung.
I doubt it would have added much to the price since the rest of the hardware
and software is already there.
Brian

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Davey

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Feb 3, 2024, 7:26:24 AMFeb 3
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Red Button works 99% of the time on the main BBC channels, but does not
link to iPlayer.
For that, you need an internet connection (the 'i' in iPlayer).

Sometimes they show a programme that looks like an iPlayer production,
but it is via Red Button.
Only the BBC.....

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