As a more recent example of a similar concept, TiVo would distribute guide data to their DVRs using encoded video broadcast during overnight Paid Programming time slots. The practice ran from about 1999 to 2016. Around 2016, TiVo discontinued support for guide data updates for their first-generation Series1 DVRs. I couldn't find much information about these broadcasts online, though someone did post a clip of one from 2003 [1], there are a few copies of more recent introduction and conclusion animations [2], and there is some information about them on Wikipedia [3]. It could be a fun project to try to decode it.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfUgT2YoPzI

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnu97CHDrYI

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infomercial#TiVo

Here's a recent attempt to load code via video recordings of a TV show from the 80s. It wasn't an easy task. From the Youtube channel Retro Recipies:

Decoding A Program Sent From The Past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MezkfYTN6EQ

Did We Decode A Program Sent From The Past?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRcs_TUpQ6g

ACTUALLY Receiving A Program Sent From The Past!:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm0EACgCbM0&t=1203s

There was also a backup system for PCs that used a TV interface card, and you connected your computer to a VCR to hold the data. Data was stored in white scanlines on top of a black background. Probably not the most efficient way to store data over NTSC (or PAL) video.

Also from the same web site:

https://newslttrs.com/yes-in-the-1980s-we-downloaded-games-f...

I remember for a short time Computer Chronicle would have a segment where they flashed what looked like static on the screen to transmit programs. You had to have some device to capture it and send it to a computer.

Edit: It looks like it was the followup to Computer Chronicles: Net Cafe https://cyborganthropology.com/TV_Modem

For those in the UK at the time, how was the code consumed? It sounds like the BBC Micro was somehow hooked up to the same "cable" as a TV. Is that right?

Did it decode the data automatically, or did programmers at home have to build something on top of it?

It just sounds incredibly ingenious on both ends. First, to invent the process and second, to use the data. I'd appreciate any knowledge that can help with the latter.

Back in the early 1990s I recall working on a system that downloaded Usenet news feeds over satellite. I worked for a local sysop at the time, and due to high long distance costs in Canada it was tremendously more cost effective than transporting a similar amount of bandwidth over leased lines. The rural area I lived in was only fed with copper T1 lines until ~1999 when a local group finally convinced the incumbent to install fiber with the promise of over $1 million in business from the local municipalities, schools and hospitals. Residential and business ADSL was purely a side effect of that effort. We didn't get new DSLAMs with limited VDSL2 service until summer of 2014, and it still took them a couple of years to fix issues with the copper and qualify more than a handful of lines.

This reminds me of the Basicode system, which transmitted cross platform programs over the radio... and in the Netherlands, some of the programs could then be checked against the checksummed program listings on Teletext...

I must say that I was more interested in his Mazinga action figure on the desk. I had a larger one, Shogun Warrior, when I was a kid, and I miss that toy.