Author Topic: For the countries which need Radio and TV licenses. How TV Detector Vans work...  (Read 11232 times)

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Online themadhippy

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I would have thought that the country (countries) would be as well-wired as the US is. There must be reasons
The reason begins with t and ends in bitch,There were plans to fiber up the majority of the country way back in the 80's,but the cost  made it look like the publicly owned  company carrying out the work wasn't very profitable and that dont look good when your about to flog off said public company to make the country's books look good.
 
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Offline SteveThackery

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... why can't I find any cases when evidence from TV detector vans have been used?
The license violators were tortured and were unable to tell anything.
Court records of course.
A few years ago a public information film was broadcast on the TV here in the UK. It was very brief and to the point:

"A list of all the addresses without a TV licence. That's all we need."

I think it was addressing the (correct) growing awareness that digital services had rendered the old vans ineffective.
Which is a load of bollocks because just because an address is unlicensed, it doesn't mean it requires one. It's equivalent to saying "A list of people without driving licences."

Of course, but it's not bollocks because the vast majority of addresses do have a TV licence, so it tells the enforcers where to concentrate their efforts.

Having no TV licence does not mean you are automatically breaking the law, obviously, but it is an indicator that you might be whereas an address with a TV licence isn't breaking the law and isn't worth a knock on the door.

I know you understand that really - perhaps you should take a breath before replying so intemperately.
 

Offline SteveThackery

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... why can't I find any cases when evidence from TV detector vans have been used?
The license violators were tortured and were unable to tell anything.
Court records of course.
A few years ago a public information film was broadcast on the TV here in the UK. It was very brief and to the point:

"A list of all the addresses without a TV licence. That's all we need."

I think it was addressing the (correct) growing awareness that digital services had rendered the old vans ineffective.
Which is a load of bollocks because just because an address is unlicensed, it doesn't mean it requires one. It's equivalent to saying "A list of people without driving licences."

if a TV means you require a license what microscopic fraction of households doesn't need one?

A TV does not mean you require a licence. The point of "the list of addresses without a licence" is to allow the enforcers to not waste time on the licenced households and just make enquiries on the few households without a licence. It does not mean they are breaking the law, only that they might be.
 

Offline SteveThackery

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Having a TV does not require a licence in the UK. Watching live TV does. Yeah, its weird. When they needed to accommodate the internet they altered the rules to be around watching things live from a broadcast, whether over air, cable, internet, satellite or anything else. If I only watch video on demand from Netflix, Youtube, and so on I don't need a TV licence. A growing number of people are like this.

To be more specific, watching "near live" TV also requires a licence, PLUS watching ANYTHING on iPlayer (the BBC's streaming service) regardless of when it was broadcast.
 

Offline SteveThackery

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OK; so around half of people (households) in the UK receive TV over the air. Gotcha.

I'll only add that this is surprising to me; I would have thought that the country (countries) would be as well-wired as the US is. There must be reasons ...

It's just not that simple. Firstly, most households with a TV have an antenna or dish for watching broadcast television. Most households also have a broadband connection to the Internet which they use for streaming TV.  Some streaming material is from the broadcasters, so its the same stuff that gets broadcast; some material is from the smaller players who only stream online, not broadcast. The key point is that it all gets carried over the Internet (using the UDP protocol, so no compelled packets).

"Cable TV" - whereby several channels are transported over a dedicated cable to the premises which carries only TV and radio channels and nothing else* - has never been as big in the UK as traditional broadcasting and I suspect is completely obsolete by now.

* I recall my grandparents had a cable service from Redifusion back in the 60s. It was a coax with a switch box on the end.
 

Online Zero999

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OK; so around half of people (households) in the UK receive TV over the air. Gotcha.

I'll only add that this is surprising to me; I would have thought that the country (countries) would be as well-wired as the US is. There must be reasons ...

It's just not that simple. Firstly, most households with a TV have an antenna or dish for watching broadcast television. Most households also have a broadband connection to the Internet which they use for streaming TV.  Some streaming material is from the broadcasters, so its the same stuff that gets broadcast; some material is from the smaller players who only stream online, not broadcast. The key point is that it all gets carried over the Internet (using the UDP protocol, so no compelled packets).

"Cable TV" - whereby several channels are transported over a dedicated cable to the premises which carries only TV and radio channels and nothing else* - has never been as big in the UK as traditional broadcasting and I suspect is completely obsolete by now.

* I recall my grandparents had a cable service from Redifusion back in the 60s. It was a coax with a switch box on the end.
Some people also receive over the air TV, even though they have good broadband. It means you can watch TV and it doesn't reduce broadband bandwitdth for others in the house who are using the Internet.

... why can't I find any cases when evidence from TV detector vans have been used?
The license violators were tortured and were unable to tell anything.
Court records of course.
A few years ago a public information film was broadcast on the TV here in the UK. It was very brief and to the point:

"A list of all the addresses without a TV licence. That's all we need."

I think it was addressing the (correct) growing awareness that digital services had rendered the old vans ineffective.
Which is a load of bollocks because just because an address is unlicensed, it doesn't mean it requires one. It's equivalent to saying "A list of people without driving licences."

Of course, but it's not bollocks because the vast majority of addresses do have a TV licence, so it tells the enforcers where to concentrate their efforts.

Having no TV licence does not mean you are automatically breaking the law, obviously, but it is an indicator that you might be whereas an address with a TV licence isn't breaking the law and isn't worth a knock on the door.

I know you understand that really - perhaps you should take a breath before replying so intemperately.
Perhaps you shouldn't be offended so easily. If you read it again, you'll find I didn't say you were talking bollocks. My anger was obviously not aimed at you, but the public information film which I recall was deliberately misleading. Using a list of unlicenced addresses to send out reminder letters to (these are often worded in a threatening manner, but that's another story) is fine, but using it as part of a scare campaign is unacceptable.
 
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Offline Ranayna

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Which is a load of bollocks because just because an address is unlicensed, it doesn't mean it requires one. It's equivalent to saying "A list of people without driving licences."
Thats essentially how it works in germany now.
All adresses have to pay. Wether you have a TV or radio or not.
Before that, you also had to pay for computers.

The gist was: You have to pay for every device that *can* receive radio or television. It does not matter if you use it or not, if it can receive, you have to pay.
Internet radio was a thing, and computers *can* connect to the internet, so you have to pay for them. Graciously only the reduced rate for a radio though :p
So essentially this boiled down to "everyone has to pay" anyway.

So to get rid of the buerocracy (yeah, yeah, unbelievable in germany :D) the government changed licensing to be household based.
Every household pays. Regardless of how many or if any devices are present.

Back in the 1970s, the Australian government decided that the cost of administering Radio & TV Receiving licenses was greater than the revenue received & abolished them.
The broadcasting environment in Australia included both taxpayer owned stations (the ABC), & privately owned Commercial stations, so it was easier to just finance the ABC from general taxation.
Revenue for german TV licensing was a whopping 9.02 billion Euro in 2023.

This is only used for the public TV and radio stations. We have two main TV stations, a number of generalized regional stations (i think it's five or six), with even more regionalized news programming. And a some more specialized ones. There is also Arte, a collaboration between France and Germany.
There is also the "Mediathek", comparable with iPlayer. But due to german competition law, shows *cannot* be permanently available, as the public stations are not allowed to directly compete with commercial stations since they are "subsidized"

From what i know from the top of my head, a majority of costs of the public stations are pensions. And sports rights are also quite expensive.
 

Offline pdenisowski

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I wanna see this working on video, because people still have old tv's and also spectrum analyzers

I don't have an old TV lying around, but I spent over a decade doing interference hunting and direction finding in the field (domestically and internationally) as part of my job working for a major test equipment manufacturer.  I will admit that in the > 100 cases I worked, I never had to identify and track down a television set, but I found plenty of LO signals, including ones originating inside of concrete-walled buildings containing lots of other electronic devices.  It's really not that hard if you have the right equipment (receiver and directional antenna) and a little bit of experience.

I'll see if I can set up and record a similar test using a modern TV. 
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Offline madires

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Revenue for german TV licensing was a whopping 9.02 billion Euro in 2023.

And despite that much money and the official task to inform and educate we get mostly just (poor) entertainment. It's a disgrace!

This is only used for the public TV and radio stations. We have two main TV stations, a number of generalized regional stations (i think it's five or six), with even more regionalized news programming. And a some more specialized ones. There is also Arte, a collaboration between France and Germany.

In total 21 TV and 70 radio stations/programs (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_%C3%B6ffentlich-rechtlichen_Programme_in_Deutschland, in German). BTW, Arte is one of the very few TV programs living up to the task of public-service broadcasting.

 
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Online coppice

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OK; so around half of people (households) in the UK receive TV over the air. Gotcha.

I'll only add that this is surprising to me; I would have thought that the country (countries) would be as well-wired as the US is. There must be reasons ...
The reason is there was little interest in cable until the 80s. However, satellites were going up at around the same time, and putting up a small dish antenna was cheaper than wiring each home. It took a while, and some bankruptcies, but eventual Sky's satellite service developed a fairly big market, and cable never got that big. They only wired up the denser neighbourhoods, where the cost per home was lower.

Currently we can get the main TV channels from terrestrial broadcast, satellite broadcast, cable or internet. I don't think there are figures for how many people currently use each option, but a lot of people still use the terrestrial broadcasts. The TV licence is unrelated to the medium you use. If you watch live TV through any medium, even watching only foreign TV channels over satellites or the internet, you need a TV licence.

Especially for young people, live TV is not part of their day, even for immediate things like news or sports. The BBC and ITV channels used to provide a lot of good stuff to watch, but they are now largely irrelevant, and the viewing figures for the most popular shows are way below those from the heyday of broadcast TV. So, the number of licences is falling. I think its dropping at about 500k per annum.
 

Online BrianHGTopic starter

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For those who didn't realize, older TV and radios LO oscillator was mixed with the antenna signal coming in and it also literally leaked and radiated out through the same antenna the TVs and radios used to receive their broadcasts.

Yes, you can see each LO on these TV prior to the mid 90s with ease by a few houses in each direction.

When sniffing with a directional antenna and spectrum analyzer, you can easily narrow down to every 1 to 2 houses.

Everyone who says this is impossible never played with this equipment in the 70s and 80s.  The signals are there visualized in spikes on the cheap analog RF spectrum analyzers of the time and the changes in their amplitude is easily seen on said spectrum analyzers of the time just by rotating your directional antenna.

Importantly, there was far less "crud" polluting the spectrum in earlier years as switch mode supplies were virtually unknown & there weren't the other incidental radiators to contend with.

I do think that the vans were probably more useful for obtaining statistics, rather than chasing down individuals.
If a building showed strong LO signals on the standard channels used by the BBC, say, that building might be of interest for "follow up" activity.
Yup, switching supplies from wall warts many LED lights, even toys as well as laptops and PC have raised the background noise level a ton.  Not to mention all the new gadgets which communicate wirelessly like car key fobs.  The spectrum has become a mess.

In the 1980s, I could get a wireless phone operating on 25 & 50mhz region fine with ridiculous distance.  Today, they would be nothing but all noise.  Even the 5.1ghz phone can have problems unless they are digital and have channel switching.
 

Offline PlainName

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I'll see if I can set up and record a similar test using a modern TV.

That might make a great Youtube video (or is TikTok the in thing for youngsters now).

This kind of thing is of the class that seems impossible and a joke to think of for most sensible people, but which surprises by someone actually achieving it. The now well-known and exploitable SPECTRE CPU issue, for instance, would have seemed a bad idea before working code appeared. Logging keystrokes by monitoring the power supply seems equally far fetched has been demonstrated.
 
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Online themadhippy

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However, satellites were going up at around the same time, and putting up a small dish antenna was cheaper than wiring each home. It took a while, and some bankruptcies
A distant part of my memory is saying the original bsb,complete with squaerial,  didn't require a tv license,am i remembering that correct?
 

Offline Monkeh

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Alright; but what explains the large discrepancy between what I'm told is ~90% of UK viewers still receiving signals over the air vs. a much lower fraction in the US? (Don't know the number but it's a lot less than 90%.)

I don't think of the UK as a technologically backward place, so I'm assuming that isn't the reason.

Why would you think of it as technologically backward?

The explanation was also contained in my post - the licence pays for broadcast infrastructure, which doesn't require taking cable to every property. Satellite infrastructure exists and is quite commonplace for additional, directly paid channels. If you don't want any of them, why fork out for a subscription to them or for additional hardware to receive them?
 

Offline Postal2

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If you are watching a movie with a blue sky and suddenly a red commercial comes on, the change in spectrum can be detected optically at a great distance.
 

Online coppice

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The explanation was also contained in my post - the licence pays for broadcast infrastructure, which doesn't require taking cable to every property. Satellite infrastructure exists and is quite commonplace for additional, directly paid channels. If you don't want any of them, why fork out for a subscription to them or for additional hardware to receive them?
The broadcast infrastructure is paid for by the TV companies that use it, not the licence. The licence vaguely pays for the BBC, although in practice its just money passing through the government like any other tax.
 

Offline Monkeh

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The explanation was also contained in my post - the licence pays for broadcast infrastructure, which doesn't require taking cable to every property. Satellite infrastructure exists and is quite commonplace for additional, directly paid channels. If you don't want any of them, why fork out for a subscription to them or for additional hardware to receive them?
The broadcast infrastructure is paid for by the TV companies that use it, not the licence. The licence vaguely pays for the BBC, although in practice its just money passing through the government like any other tax.

Included among those companies is the BBC, funded by the licence - and the infrastructure was rolling out long before there were more than a handful of companies and channels.

Of course, I'm always open to seeing a detailed breakdown of funding for the infrastructure. Site by site would be nice.
 

Offline pdenisowski

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Given the number of people from the UK on this thread, I'm very surprised no one has mentioned the cat detector van yet

https://youtu.be/M5MnyRZLd8A?t=174

"I never seen so many bleedin’ aerials. The man said their equipment could pinpoint a purr at four hundred yards, and Eric being such a happy cat was a piece of cake."

 :-DD
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Online Xena E

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Does it have to be the German girl to address the title of this thread directly

Just read this:

BURLING, K. G. and FANNING, J. C.. A New Detection System for Television and V.H.F. Radio Receivers. P.O.E.E.J. Vol. 55, p. 219, Jan. 1963.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/POEEJ/60s/Post-Office-Electrical-Engineers-Journal-1963-01.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwijsrO1n-mKAxXeZ0EAHV0DGKYQFnoECBcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0EMyXjQF1V_WAIRPXXktVs
 
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Online TimFox

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That article from 1963 states that the prior system involved detecting radiation from the horizontal deflection system (reasonably high power at 15,625 Hz), and the new system detected radiation from local oscillators (called "frequency-changing oscillator").  A problem with the latter is that receivers use different intermediate frequencies:  that is discussed in the paper. 
In the former system, the horizontal deflection frequency for different transmissions (ITA and BBC) differ slightly, and the resulting radiation from more than one receiver will have a heavy beat effect.  Also noted is the increase in interference from other low-frequency systems, including automobiles.
There are good photographs of an automobile with a large antenna on its roof (suitable for conspiracy theorists) and other equipment (including a periscope to locate the source), along with a description of the "panoramic receiver", which is an older term for spectrum analyzer.
 

Online Xena E

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The early detection system in the UK utilising the radiation from the horizontal deflection system was because that very early receivers were often Tuned Radio Frequency, as they were single channel (BBC) sets and therefore did not have local oscillators, so although the technological knowhow would have been available to detect the LO, it wouldn't have been of any value. Superhets only became universal with the introduction of ITV in 1955.

Both BBC and The later ITV service used a line frequency of 10,125Hz which was 405 lines, and was transmitted on band 1 and 3 VHF, it was only later that the BBC2 service was started on UHF with the 15,625 Hz 625 line horizontal timebase on band 5.

X
 

Online TimFox

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Was early BBC television transmitted on only one channel (per locality) for very long?
A TRF set is practicable for a single preset frequency, but superheterodyne with LO is much better for selecting between multiple frequencies.
 

Online coppice

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Was early BBC television transmitted on only one channel (per locality) for very long?
A TRF set is practicable for a single preset frequency, but superheterodyne with LO is much better for selecting between multiple frequencies.
Yes. The UK had only one BBC channel until 1955. Then regional commercial channels began, one in each region, referred to as ITV.
 

Online Analog Kid

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Alright; but what explains the large discrepancy between what I'm told is ~90% of UK viewers still receiving signals over the air vs. a much lower fraction in the US? (Don't know the number but it's a lot less than 90%.)

I don't think of the UK as a technologically backward place, so I'm assuming that isn't the reason.

Why would you think of it as technologically backward?

What, are you baiting me? Please reread my comment: I said I don't think of the UK as being technologically backward.
 

Online coppercone2

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For those who didn't realize, older TV and radios LO oscillator was mixed with the antenna signal coming in and it also literally leaked and radiated out through the same antenna the TVs and radios used to receive their broadcasts.

Yes, you can see each LO on these TV prior to the mid 90s with ease by a few houses in each direction.

When sniffing with a directional antenna and spectrum analyzer, you can easily narrow down to every 1 to 2 houses.

Everyone who says this is impossible never played with this equipment in the 70s and 80s.  The signals are there visualized in spikes on the cheap analog RF spectrum analyzers of the time and the changes in their amplitude is easily seen on said spectrum analyzers of the time just by rotating your directional antenna.

Importantly, there was far less "crud" polluting the spectrum in earlier years as switch mode supplies were virtually unknown & there weren't the other incidental radiators to contend with.

I do think that the vans were probably more useful for obtaining statistics, rather than chasing down individuals.
If a building showed strong LO signals on the standard channels used by the BBC, say, that building might be of interest for "follow up" activity.

Still, I read about things like simple refrigerator compressors blocking microwave wifi. I am almost sure that there could have been poorly maintained motors that do all kinds of havok to measurements. Like elevator, appliance, alternators on the street from cars, etc. I still think you must have had a fair bit of crap to deal with, even back then. Now I would think its basically impossible lol

Apparently simple electromechanial street lights could make up to 10Ghz interference! Especially with how shoddy some switches on lower cost things used to be before they come up with good platings, not to mention good brushes. And this was before everyone replaced everything (coins in the fuse box).

While there is less guaranteed RF sources, I think you had enough shoddy electrical engineering and maintenance practices that must have made it at least difficult or temperamental.  And poor knowledge of ground bonding techniques outside of advanced places like radio stations, bad weathering on shield infrastructure, poor electrical jointery. I noticed unless its something expensive, things looked mega shoddy

and crappy insulating arcing.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2025, 09:58:50 pm by coppercone2 »
 


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