Problems Solved
PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT
What’s wrong with my TV’s Text button?
Q I have four Samsung smart TVs. On the most recent model, which I bought a couple of years ago, pressing the text button on the remote (just above the volume – pictured right) fails to display the menu. My other TVs are all older, and if I press this button while watching BBC One, Two and News channels, the menu appears. As I’m hard of hearing, I use the menu all the time. I know it’s available on this newer TV because it has appeared on two separate occasions over the past two years. Otherwise, the red button always takes me to the catchup area. Pressing the text button on my other TVs generally gives me subtitles on ITV, Channel 4 and 5.
Brian Dingle
A There’s quite a lot to unpick in your question, so we’ll work through it piece by piece. The photo you sent us wasn’t clear enough to print in the magazine, but we could see that the menu you’re talking about belongs to the BBC Red Button service.
The BBC has made rather a mess of this service. In the beginning, the Red Button was a simple way of adding some interactivity to early ‘smart’ TVs, and it worked a bit like Teletext. However, the service eventually split into two different technologies. Later still, in 2019, the BBC announced plans to axe all its Red Button tools. Viewers were not happy, and after protests the corporation had a last-minute change of heart and kept them going – albeit in basic form.
This background is important because we think you’re conflating a couple of things, and your use of different TV sets is only adding to the confusion. Trust us when we say many ‘smart’ TVs are anything but smart, and can behave quite differently, even when they’re from the same manufacturer.
