Editing Telidon (section)

===Problems===

Test deployments demonstrated the problems that most other teletext systems also discovered: without an enormous amount of content, viewer interest is difficult to maintain. While large Telidon deployments might hold tens of thousands of pages, users were able to quickly exhaust the content in their particular areas of interest, suggesting that systems would have to contain hundreds of thousands of pages in order to remain interesting for longer periods.<ref name=b/> As Gordon Thompson of [[Bell-Northern Research]] put it, "all of the excitement is in the expectation; the reality is really quite disappointing."<ref>Peter Desbarats, "Newspapers and Computers: an industry in transition", pg. 52</ref>

Most teletext systems, Telidon included, were created in the context of the broadcast model, where the content would be provided by large vendors and then pushed one-way to the user in a fashion similar to television or newspapers. Interactivity was generally limited to menu selections or providing information on forms (like [[online banking]]). This placed the entire burden of creating the content on the service providers and their partners, an expensive and time-consuming process. Since much of the content in question was already available on different media controlled by the same companies, teletext services also had the problem of competing with incumbent mediums that were less expensive and better developed.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20061010043354/http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/collection/innovation07.cfm "Shaping the Internet"], Canada Science and Technology Museum</ref>

Telidon was also expensive. When it was introduced the DoC expected terminals to be available for $200 to $300 by 1982, but this did not come to be.<ref name="Sachs p. 24">{{harvnb|Sachs|1979|p=24}}</ref> The largest suppliers of terminals were [[Electrohome]], Norpak and Microtel, whose terminals ranged between $1,800 and $2,500. During the development period the hardware manufacturers felt that demand would drive down prices to less than $600, however, results from trials indicated that even this would be considered too expensive for the mass market.<ref name=b/>