Editing Telidon (section)

===Telidon disappears===

By the mid-1980s, [[home computer]]s with graphics capabilities similar to Telidon had already come and gone, driving prices to points far below even the simplest Telidon terminal.<ref>Project Grassroots, one of the most successful Telidon deployments, listed the [[AT&T Sceptre]] terminal at $400 late in the program.[https://web.archive.org/web/20070705053914/http://www.telidonhistoryproject.ca/grassroots/grassroots_subscriptionfee.html] At that point the [[Commodore 128]] was available for $299.</ref> A generation of machines like the [[Macintosh]], [[Amiga]], and [[Atari ST]] were entering the market with capabilities Telidon systems could not match. At the same time, information services like [[CompuServe]] and [[The Source (online service)|The Source]] were offering a usable online experience that Telidon failed to offer.

For all of these reasons, interest in Telidon, and Videotex in general, quickly faded. One reason was the issue of continued funding which the Government hoped would come from private publishing companies such as The Globe and Mail, or The Toronto Star as most likely candidates. During the latter part of 1983 and early 1984 of the Informart CEO Dave Carlisle's reign, private publishing corporations couldn't find a suitable approach and this resulted in D. Carlisle's resignation with severe impact on Infomart, the flagship of Telidon in rough seas.<ref name="M.T. Sindel, Infomart">M.T. Sindel, Infomart</ref>

The government's funding of the Telidon efforts came to an official end on 31 March 1985,<ref name=b/> at which point $69 million had been spent not counting the revenue expended by Infomart who had made national and international sales in excess of $20M. It was estimated that another $200 million had been invested by various industry partners, $100 million of that by Bell Canada. Most of the early test systems had ended their runs by 1982, while the commercial systems persevered for a few years longer; [[NBC]]'s system ended in January 1985,<ref name="Gillies p. 6">{{harvnb|Gillies|1990|p=6}}</ref> and then ExtraVision, Viewtron and Gateway in March 1986.<ref name="Gillies p. 6"/> In spite of these services finding some level of consumer demand, none were able to find a pricing structure that paid for their operation while still being interesting to their consumer base.<ref name="Banks p. 75">{{harvnb|Banks|2008|p=75}}</ref>

Telidon systems continued to be used as a one-way medium for some time. A common use was to use Telidon terminals to produce video that was then broadcast for viewing as closed-circuit television signals to conventional televisions, rather than sending the digital information to terminals connected to those televisions. Systems like this were common for informational displays in airports and other public areas, as well as information displays for cable TV stations.<ref>[http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/bitstream/1892/7573/1/b16210219.pdf Premier Cablevision ran such a system in Burnaby, BC]</ref>