For the countries which need Radio and TV licenses. How TV Detector Vans work...

[coppice]

And... functioning detector vans did exist! At least during the days of analogue television, there were however very few of them. The were operated by the GPO but their main mode of operation was to be sent to areas where the proportion of households that had sales of receivers credited to them who did not have licences, the vans were more of an encouragement for people to go get the licence than be an effective tool in catching unlicenced viewing.

The entire radio and TV transmission infrastructure, its operation and maintenance was run by the GPO, and paid for by the radio and TV channel operators, until the GPO's telecommunications services were dissolved, and the GPO was left as just the mail operator.

[Xena E]

In 1971, on a visit to the UK, I had the opportunity to watch a dual standard BW TV.
Conveniently, there was a Commercial (ITV) station with a both a 405 & 625 line outlet, so I could switch back & forth.

I expected to see a noticeable difference in resolution between the two systems, but that was barely discernible.
What I did notice was that on some ads, the screen suddenly went from a relatively normal grey to bright white with text upon it.
With those, the 625 line system had no problems, but with the 405 line positive modulation system, the TV would momentarily lose vertical sync.

A friend who collects vintage televisions runs them on signal converters, I first thought that it was a fault of the conversion process as I'm not old enough to have seen the 405 line sets operating off air, but was told what you state as being exactly what happens, with some sets more prone to it than others, where a scene change, or the picture going to peak white would allow the frame lock to roll one frame!

The actual definition of the pictures appeared very good, and the systems drawbacks could be forgiven it considering it had it's roots in the mid 1930's.

X

[coppice]

In 1971, on a visit to the UK, I had the opportunity to watch a dual standard BW TV.
Conveniently, there was a Commercial (ITV) station with a both a 405 & 625 line outlet, so I could switch back & forth.

I expected to see a noticeable difference in resolution between the two systems, but that was barely discernible.
What I did notice was that on some ads, the screen suddenly went from a relatively normal grey to bright white with text upon it.
With those, the 625 line system had no problems, but with the 405 line positive modulation system, the TV would momentarily lose vertical sync.

A friend who collects vintage televisions runs them on signal converters, I first thought that it was a fault of the conversion process as I'm not old enough to have seen the 405 line sets operating off air, but was told what you state as being exactly what happens, with some sets more prone to it than others, where a scene change, or the picture going to peak white would allow the frame lock to roll one frame!

The actual definition of the pictures appeared very good, and the systems drawbacks could be forgiven it considering it had it's roots in the mid 1930's.

X

After 1963, when BBC2 was broadcasting at 625 lines and BBC1 and ITV were broadcasting at 405 lines, the difference was very obvious. However, it wasn't always clear where the difference came from. The converters to be able to show 625 lines material from BBC2 on BBC1, and the other way around, were large expensive racks of equipment with a lot of compromises in the conversion process. It was only in the mid 70s when the converters for 405, 525 and 625 lines started to a migrate to fully digital designs that the performance really improved. By then, 405 line material was almost irrelevant, and the main concern was having the cleanest possible conversion between 525 and 625 line material.

In 1971 watching the 405 line channels you were looking mostly at 625 line colour material converted down to 405 line monochrome. The largest screens in common use in 1963, when 625 line transmission started, were 23". On one of those 405 and 625 line images looked markedly different. On a smaller screen the difference wasn't so obvious.

[special_K]

There was no commercial TV stations [in the UK] until the very late 1980s

This is incorrect, commercial broadcasting started in 1955 in the UK

I think special_k post looks like it was AI generated, it is mostly bollocks.

The commercial TV companies were started in 1955 as you said, the first commercial radio station in late 1973.

No, not bollocks.

What started in 1955 was Independent Television, which was a collection of public service broadcasters. As PSBs they are required by law to operate with public interest, not commercial interest, as their main priority. Their obligation was to produce telly that was of special interest and perceived benefit to people living in the regions where they operated, and commercial activity (putting adverts on) was allowed only so far as it was needed to fund that obligation.

Getting an ITV Broadcasting license was a world of pain. Any company attempting it faced stiff competition from all the other potentials, all bending over backwards to prove they could serve the public good better than anyone else. The license only lasted a few years and then the process started all over again, and inadequate stations could and *did* wind up losing their place on air to an upstart.

Even today the "channel 3" franchises are licensed this way, but deregulation has meant that Carlton and Granada merged and bought up almost all the other license holders. It's turned the process into a formality, where ITV PLC put an uncontested bid in and it gets rubber stamped.

This is a world of difference to pure commercial television, where your reason for broadcasting can be as simple as "I think it would make me loads of money". We didn't get that until Satellite.

There were no 2MW UHF television transmitters operating within the UK, the most powerful were Sutton Coldfield, Crystal Palace and Sandy Heath all at 1MW.

I said "2 megawatts across four stations".

UHF 55 - 500kW - BBC1
UHF 62 - 500kW - BBC2
UHF 59 - 500kW - Granada
UHF 65 - 500kW - Channel 4

In traditional human maths, 500,000 x 4 = 2,000,000

And... functioning detector vans did exist! At least during the days of analogue television, there were however very few of them. They were operated by the GPO but their main mode of operation was to be sent to areas where there was a high  proportion of households that had sales of receivers credited to them, but who did not have licences, the vans were more of an encouragement for people to go get the licence than be an effective tool in catching unlicenced viewing.
(Attachment Link)
The vans were effective in pinpointing when the unlicenced housholds were viewing their sets so that the agent could call and catch the owner in the act. Very few "prosecution cases" were successful but it was not down to the vans equipment being fake or not working... it was a tool in the investigation but AFAIK was in itself inadmissible as evidence in court as the unlicenced set had to be positively identified as installed and being used.

https://www.britishtelephones.com/vehicles/lightvans/023.htm

That is the official story but, as always, without evidence. The simplest explanation that fits with surviving evidence (prosecution records, vans you can see in museums) is that they just lied.

[Analog Kid]

I think special_k post looks like it was AI generated, it is mostly bollocks.

Izzat right? I was all ready to thank them for their post.
Sitting here on the other side of the pond, it all seemed quite credible to me. But how would I know?

[special_K]

Consider that he's upset I think ITV is a PSB rather than a commercial broadcaster in the american or modern sense (Because they are, you can check), and that I know that five times four is twenty.

The big issue with terrestial is it uses a lot of bandwidth for relatively little content.  RF bandwidth is precious.  Freeview DVB-T2 only supports at most 13 FHD channels in 1080i60 with the current multiplex arrangement.  Forget about 4K, HDR or anything like that.  Very easy to do that over the internet, and then the terrestrial bands can be freed up for future phone connectivity or long range wireless applications (there's a shortage of bandwidth in the sub-800MHz band that Freeview uses.)  Bring on the death of terrestrial television, I welcome it.

The problem would be solved if all the SD Channels could be moved to a more modern codec and not be stuck on MPEG-2. Moving them to 1080i would be a bit pointless, since it's overwhelmingly just repeats of old 1970s ITV shows on there...

[coppice]

What started in 1955 was Independent Television, which was a collection of public service broadcasters. As PSBs they are required by law to operate with public interest, not commercial interest, as their main priority. Their obligation was to produce telly that was of special interest and perceived benefit to people living in the regions where they operated, and commercial activity (putting adverts on) was allowed only so far as it was needed to fund that obligation.

They were required to broadcast a certain amount of news, schools programs, and children's programmes as a condition of their licence. They were also limited to 9 minutes an hour of advertising. However, if, as very occasionally occurred, a transmitter tripped out, and it took an hour to get it transmitting again, the station log logged 9 minutes of downtime. Only the advertising time they lost was worthy of logging. They were aggressively commercial, constantly pushing what the regulators would let them get away with in terms of brand placement, and so on.

[special_K]

That's more about what they wanted to be versus what they were legally obligated to be. I'm under no illusions that they sincerely wanted their PSB obligations, given the terrible state of modern day ITV1.

Deregulation has been a cultural disaster.

[vk6zgo]

There was no commercial TV stations [in the UK] until the very late 1980s

This is incorrect, commercial broadcasting started in 1955 in the UK

I think special_k post looks like it was AI generated, it is mostly bollocks.

The commercial TV companies were started in 1955 as you said, the first commercial radio station in late 1973.

No, not bollocks.

What started in 1955 was Independent Television, which was a collection of public service broadcasters. As PSBs they are required by law to operate with public interest, not commercial interest, as their main priority. Their obligation was to produce telly that was of special interest and perceived benefit to people living in the regions where they operated, and commercial activity (putting adverts on) was allowed only so far as it was needed to fund that obligation.

Getting an ITV Broadcasting license was a world of pain. Any company attempting it faced stiff competition from all the other potentials, all bending over backwards to prove they could serve the public good better than anyone else. The license only lasted a few years and then the process started all over again, and inadequate stations could and *did* wind up losing their place on air to an upstart.

Even today the "channel 3" franchises are licensed this way, but deregulation has meant that Carlton and Granada merged and bought up almost all the other license holders. It's turned the process into a formality, where ITV PLC put an uncontested bid in and it gets rubber stamped.

This is a world of difference to pure commercial television, where your reason for broadcasting can be as simple as "I think it would make me loads of money". We didn't get that until Satellite.

"Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck"
The non-BBC channels I watched in the UK in 1971  had exactly the same style & quantity of ads as the pure Commercial stations I was used to watching in Australia.

There were no 2MW UHF television transmitters operating within the UK, the most powerful were Sutton Coldfield, Crystal Palace and Sandy Heath all at 1MW.

I said "2 megawatts across four stations".

UHF 55 - 500kW - BBC1
UHF 62 - 500kW - BBC2
UHF 59 - 500kW - Granada
UHF 65 - 500kW - Channel 4

In traditional human maths, 500,000 x 4 = 2,000,000

The power of each discrete TV Channel did not add up to advantage any one of them.
To UHF 55, the presence of UHF 59, UHF 62 & UHF 65 was quite incidental, as the transmitted power of that station was 500kW EIRP, & would still be that if all the stations were turned off.
The same thing applies to any of the channels.

By the way, you will note I quoted EIRP, which is the power which would have been needed with a ( mythical) Isotropic radiator to obtain the same signal strength in the designated service area.
A common antenna gain figure is 10dB, which means that "sync tip power" measurement of each transmitter would have been 50kW.

And... functioning detector vans did exist! At least during the days of analogue television, there were however very few of them. They were operated by the GPO but their main mode of operation was to be sent to areas where there was a high  proportion of households that had sales of receivers credited to them, but who did not have licences, the vans were more of an encouragement for people to go get the licence than be an effective tool in catching unlicenced viewing.
(Attachment Link)
The vans were effective in pinpointing when the unlicenced housholds were viewing their sets so that the agent could call and catch the owner in the act. Very few "prosecution cases" were successful but it was not down to the vans equipment being fake or not working... it was a tool in the investigation but AFAIK was in itself inadmissible as evidence in court as the unlicenced set had to be positively identified as installed and being used.

https://www.britishtelephones.com/vehicles/lightvans/023.htm

That is the official story but, as always, without evidence. The simplest explanation that fits with surviving evidence (prosecution records, vans you can see in museums) is that they just lied.

[BrianHG]

It isn't the only reason, an equally important one is that as signal strengths fall, picture sync is the last thing to fail.
In the early days of TV in Australia, when country transmitter sites were rare, it was not unusual to see a fully locked, but very noisy picture at places well outside even the "fringe area" of the city station.

I guess I could imagine that with poorly designed sync separator circuitry with very wide PLL locking circuitry due to age/temperature drift in old tube TV circuit designs.

Sync locking onto the snowiest most garbage source video signals appeared to not be a problem at all with TV receivers in the mid 70s here in North America.  I guess a gated pll locking scheme sifted out the 15.7khz and 60hz syncs and just didn't care much about the noise.  Just passing the source video from the tuner through a very low pass filter, like below ~500khz, left you with a clearly visible visible video sync even on the noisiest junk imaginable directly coming from the tuner unfiltered.

The only TV systems which used positive modulation  were the UK 405 line system & the old French 819 line system.
Both the North American 525 line & the European originated 625 line systems used negative modulation from the start.

Anything you saw in NA would benefit from the advantages of that modulation system, just as the Australian ones around 20 years earlier did, as I pointed out.

Another advantage of negative modulation was that the horizontal sync pulses & their associated black/ blanking level signals offered a standard DC level in the video waveform, which allowed automatic level control of the transmitted RF signal.

In 1971, on a visit to the UK, I had the opportunity to watch a dual standard BW TV.
Conveniently, there was a Commercial (ITV) station with a both a 405 & 625 line outlet, so I could switch back & forth.

I expected to see a noticeable difference in resolution between the two systems, but that was barely discernible.
What I did notice was that on some ads, the screen suddenly went from a relatively normal grey to bright white with text upon it.
With those, the 625 line system had no problems, but with the 405 line positive modulation system, the TV would momentarily lose vertical sync.

Yup, in North America, the lowest point in the video, IE: sync and black, were transmitted with the highest AM amplitude while the 100% white portion of the picture had nearly no signal strength at all, only enough to maintain the embedded 4.5mhz FM audio signal.

[vk6zgo]

It isn't the only reason, an equally important one is that as signal strengths fall, picture sync is the last thing to fail.
In the early days of TV in Australia, when country transmitter sites were rare, it was not unusual to see a fully locked, but very noisy picture at places well outside even the "fringe area" of the city station.

I guess I could imagine that with poorly designed sync separator circuitry with very wide PLL locking circuitry due to age/temperature drift in old tube TV circuit designs.

Sync locking onto the snowiest most garbage source video signals appeared to not be a problem at all with TV receivers in the mid 70s here in North America.  I guess a gated pll locking scheme sifted out the 15.7khz and 60hz syncs and just didn't care much about the noise.  Just passing the source video from the tuner through a very low pass filter, like below ~500khz, left you with a clearly visible visible video sync even on the noisiest junk imaginable directly coming from the tuner unfiltered.

The only TV systems which used positive modulation  were the UK 405 line system & the old French 819 line system.
Both the North American 525 line & the European originated 625 line systems used negative modulation from the start.

Anything you saw in NA would benefit from the advantages of that modulation system, just as the Australian ones around 20 years earlier did, as I pointed out.

Another advantage of negative modulation was that the horizontal sync pulses & their associated black/ blanking level signals offered a standard DC level in the video waveform, which allowed automatic level control of the transmitted RF signal.

In 1971, on a visit to the UK, I had the opportunity to watch a dual standard BW TV.
Conveniently, there was a Commercial (ITV) station with a both a 405 & 625 line outlet, so I could switch back & forth.

I expected to see a noticeable difference in resolution between the two systems, but that was barely discernible.
What I did notice was that on some ads, the screen suddenly went from a relatively normal grey to bright white with text upon it.
With those, the 625 line system had no problems, but with the 405 line positive modulation system, the TV would momentarily lose vertical sync.

Yup, in North America, the lowest point in the video, IE: sync and black, were transmitted with the highest AM amplitude while the 100% white portion of the picture had nearly no signal strength at all, only enough to maintain the embedded 4.5mhz FM audio signal.

The FM Sound system was a separate carrier transmitted at a full amplitude of, I seem to remember for NTSC, one fifth of the Vision Carrier level It was not "imbedded".

The BW Australian 625 line system was originally the same as NTSC, but just previous to the advent of PAL colour was reduced to one tenth of the Vision carrier level.

The original CH2 transmitters at ABW2 transmitting site, where I worked for many years, had completely separate transmitters for Vision & Sound.
Many later transmitters were really separate units in one box, but some had wideband PAs which amplified both RF signals.

[special_K]

"Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck"
The non-BBC channels I watched in the UK in 1971  had exactly the same style & quantity of ads as the pure Commercial stations I was used to watching in Australia.

Perhaps. But we don't determine if a tv station is a public service broadcaster or not by measuring number of ads. What determines that is the law.

The power of each discrete TV Channel did not add up to advantage any one of them.
To UHF 55, the presence of UHF 59, UHF 62 & UHF 65 was quite incidental, as the transmitted power of that station was 500kW EIRP, & would still be that if all the stations were turned off.
The same thing applies to any of the channels.

By the way, you will note I quoted EIRP, which is the power which would have been needed with a ( mythical) Isotropic radiator to obtain the same signal strength in the designated service area.
A common antenna gain figure is 10dB, which means that "sync tip power" measurement of each transmitter would have been 50kW.

I've never said otherwise?

If I split a cake across a group of four people, I'm not giving them a cake each. I'm giving each one a slice of cake that's 1/4th of the whole. The group, collectively, would have one cake's worth of cake.

Seems that some people are keen to "creatively interpret" other people in order to have something to argue about.

[m k]

Sometimes nitpicking is a virtue here.
Somewhere is also a thread for importance of accurate descriptions.

But it was sloppy reading from Xena E and only sort of nitpicking from vk6zgo.
AVGresponding then was deliberately, right or wrong, joining all parts to broadcast.

Next can be lexicon backed arguments.
And of course a point of a point of relevant wattage measurement point.

My take is that putting out is different than overall use.
For transmitter it means that putting out is an energy broadcasted.
(include deliberately selected words)

For other things my take is who owns it.
So the argument is more or less a nuance.

[Xena E]

I think special_k post looks like it was AI generated, it is mostly bollocks.

Izzat right? I was all ready to thank them for their post.
Sitting here on the other side of the pond, it all seemed quite credible to me. But how would I know?

As its you that asks sweety 😁

Well, the claim was that there were no commercial television stations within the UK, before the late 1980s.

Verbatim:

There was no commercial TV stations [in the UK] until the very late 1980s

A commercial TV station to my obviously limited understanding is one that was financed independently from government funding, and this is done the same way as it is in America with adverts and later with sponsored programmes.

There were several separate companies who ran different areas, but only one was originally allowed in each area.

These commercial stations did not have to adhere to the mandate that the BBC did.

Edit: the only difference  between the USA pattern where some individual programs were solely made for the purposes of advertising a single organisations product, and the UK pattern in, is that in the UK explicit advertising was to be confined to advertising breaks in programs, though product placement was allowed, so "Soap operas" would have perhaps had several products being placed in one show, although no reference or introduction would be made; an example of this in the UK was the crime drama "The Sweeney" where the show placed and promoted products from the Ford Motor Company.

Why special K then brings in "public service" description is just to bluff the original point,

As for the transmitter powers... There's Google if you want the boring facts... but those little things don't seem to matter to some... I'm going to make an assertion here that the nearest transmitter of any kind to the UK that had an input power of 2MW during the time when the analog TV transmitters under discussion were operational was the one used to broadcast Radio Luxembourg on the medium wave broadcast band... check if you like... currently the transmitter site at Solt in Hungary is the only one that can boast that power I believe.

Detector vans...
As others have said the process of detecting a crt superhet television receiver is rather trivial, why there are those that don't accept it being possible IDK?

That is the official story but, as always, without evidence. The simplest explanation that fits with surviving evidence (prosecution records, vans you can see in museums) is that they just lied.

Thats just an opinion... I posted the GPO journal of the era that details the design of the equipment,  and the article with the pictures of one of the original vans.

So we have to accept that this was all fake?

My reason for being interested...
I was born in Germany and lived there for the first ten years of my life, and so really don't remember much of the era of analog television transmissions in the UK. However, my mother is Welsh and Grandpops was an engineer for the GPO... he serviced the equipment used in these vans... he told me that the uhf equipment was so good that from 50metres it could pinpoint a televisions position in a dwelling  if it was switched on of course, and also which channel was being watched.

He said that there weren't many units in service, less than ten in the country at any one time, and the sight of them periodically patrolling the streets was generally enough to send the licence dodgers scuttling to the post office to buy their licences... it's possible there were also 'dummy' vehicles, because of this.

The big drawback with the equipment was that it couldn't discern a monochrome TV from colour, and so if you could buy your TV and give a false address then you could just buy the licence at the lower fee...
As I said in a previous post, the detectors were a tool that was used in the identification of licence evaders, and could not be used as evidence if in the rare cases it was taken to court

Generally people were pursuaded to just buy the licence.

But hey! People should believe what makes them happy, this doesnt matter, it's all history.

But it was sloppy reading from Xena E

What did I miss?
X

[m k]

Nothing really.
My understanding was that station is more like a physical place with transmitting gear.
And since special_K disagreed with you, sort of, we the opponents won (2-1) the vote of real meaning behind the word.

[Sorama]

Although I used to repair televisions for years, I have no clue how one can determine if and on which channel a TV is on.

So allow me to find this a really intriguing story, if true at all.

[tom66]

I used to have a Panasonic plasma TV that had the interesting feature of being able to receive firmware updates for the whole TV over the terrestrial connection.  It was not a smart TV so no internet connection.  Panasonic would place a firmware update on a hidden channel (one in the Freeview multiplex was reserved for this) and, provided the TV was in standby for that half-hour slot (usually early in the morning, 3-4am kind of time) it would power up the receiver and download the update. Manufacturers would share this channel for updates, IIRC it was reserved by the Freeview people for this purpose, so all sorts of updates would go out over this channel.

I had always assumed that this would be exempt from the TV licence requirements, but it would be technically receiving and recording data from an over-the-air broadcast.

[dave j]

Well, the claim was that there were no commercial television stations within the UK, before the late 1980s.

Verbatim:

There was no commercial TV stations [in the UK] until the very late 1980s

A commercial TV station to my obviously limited understanding is one that was financed independently from government funding, and this is done the same way as it is in America with adverts and later with sponsored programmes.

There were several separate companies who ran different areas, but only one was originally allowed in each area.

These commercial stations did not have to adhere to the mandate that the BBC did.

...

Why special K then brings in "public service" description is just to bluff the original point,

'Public service requirements imposed by the government' and 'funded by commerce' are not mutually exclusive as special K is implying. ITV Schools is a notable example of public service broadcasting on UK commercial channels.

[Xena E]

Nothing really.
My understanding was that station is more like a physical place with transmitting gear.
And since special_K disagreed with you, sort of, we the opponents won (2-1) the vote of real meaning behind the word.

Thank you for your reply, it seems that the meaning of the word yet again is the contention.

A Commercial broadcaster was always in my experience a term that was widely used to describe an independently run company that was funded by adveritising, these were profit making organisations, so to diferentiate between commercial and somthing else is just fallacious...

Well, the claim was that there were no commercial television stations within the UK, before the late 1980s.

Verbatim:

There was no commercial TV stations [in the UK] until the very late 1980s

A commercial TV station to my obviously limited understanding is one that was financed independently from government funding, and this is done the same way as it is in America with adverts and later with sponsored programmes.

There were several separate companies who ran different areas, but only one was originally allowed in each area.

These commercial stations did not have to adhere to the mandate that the BBC did.

...

Why special K then brings in "public service" description is just to bluff the original point,

'Public service requirements imposed by the government' and 'funded by commerce' are not mutually exclusive as special K is implying. ITV Schools is a notable example of public service broadcasting on UK commercial channels.

True, but the terms imposed on the independent companies were to ensure a basic quality of service, they were not the same rules as applied to the BBC and the example you gave was no doubt driven not only by mandate but also popular demand.

If the term "Commercial broadcasting" now exclusively refers soley to what? "Independently financed crap programming" then I apologise unreservedly.

 

Although I used to repair televisions for years, I have no clue how one can determine if and on which channel a TV is on.

So allow me to find this a really intriguing story, if true at all.

Yes, the one technique that allows this is purely the re radiation of the local oscillator signal. Even in a set with a well screened tuner, where the reradiated signal is in the μW range, it can be picked up with sensitive equipment.

There were other methods used as well, horizontal scan frequency for instance, though in the case of the 405 line system often the TV line output transformer was audible...

I used to have a Panasonic plasma TV that had the interesting feature of being able to receive firmware updates for the whole TV over the terrestrial connection.  It was not a smart TV so no internet connection.  Panasonic would place a firmware update on a hidden channel (one in the Freeview multiplex was reserved for this) and, provided the TV was in standby for that half-hour slot (usually early in the morning, 3-4am kind of time) it would power up the receiver and download the update. Manufacturers would share this channel for updates, IIRC it was reserved by the Freeview people for this purpose, so all sorts of updates would go out over this channel.

I had always assumed that this would be exempt from the TV licence requirements, but it would be technically receiving and recording data from an over-the-air broadcast.

Probably! The loopholes are being closed.

I watch TV infrequently,  the rules are so ambiguous,  I have been told that they translate to not even being able to watch creator content on you tube now.

I know somone that has a process control PC that is used to run automation in his factory, that has an internet connection so that the software designer (who is in a remote location) has access to provide updates, they have been told that a licence is needed for that too.

It's just a Tax.

Regards,
X

[themadhippy]

I have been told that they translate to not even being able to watch creator content on you tube now.

crapita conveniently  forgot to add tv in the scare letter that said you need a licence to watch live streams,from the tv license own web site

Watching YouTube
 You don’t need a TV Licence to watch videos or clips on demand on YouTube.
But you DO need a TV Licence if you watch TV live on YouTube. An example of this would be watching Sky News live. But it isn’t just live news or sport which needs a licence – it’s any programme which is part of a TV channel, shown or transmitted for everyone to watch at the same time.

know somone that has a process control PC that is used to run automation in his factory, that has an internet connection so that the software designer (who is in a remote location) has access to provide updates, they have been told that a licence is needed for that too.

Id tell em to offski ,meet   ya in court. See the above,especially the bit in bold

[Xena E]

I have been told that they translate to not even being able to watch creator content on you tube now.

crapita conveniently  forgot to add tv in the scare letter that said you need a licence to watch live streams,from the tv license own web site

So... Fraud by ommission then!

Watching YouTube
 You don’t need a TV Licence to watch videos or clips on demand on YouTube.
But you DO need a TV Licence if you watch TV live on YouTube. An example of this would be watching Sky News live. But it isn’t just live news or sport which needs a licence – it’s any programme which is part of a TV channel, shown or transmitted for everyone to watch at the same time.

know somone that has a process control PC that is used to run automation in his factory, that has an internet connection so that the software designer (who is in a remote location) has access to provide updates, they have been told that a licence is needed for that too.

Id tell em to offski ,meet   ya in court. See the above,especially the bit in bold

Thanks, I'll pass that on.

X

[Ranayna]

If that's their reasoning, i am curious why the UK has not yet switched to a fee per household.

[coppice]

If that's their reasoning, i am curious why the UK has not yet switched to a fee per household.

The UK TV licence is per household. An obviously historic artefact, from a time when TVs had the disposition of a piece of furniture.

[tom66]

If that's their reasoning, i am curious why the UK has not yet switched to a fee per household.

Because politically it's a toxic football no one wants to touch.

If BBC funding goes down (e.g. cutting/eliminating the licence fee), the left/centre gets upset.
If taxes go up, the right/centre get upset.

We get 'fiscal drag' which is where the fee is not increased by inflation, which effectively results in reduced real terms funding of the BBC.  That is one way doing nothing can result in a change, since the BBC will be able to afford less content.

Issues like these get put off until doing nothing becomes untenable.  That'll probably happen sometime in 2035 at this rate.

I would be fine with just rolling it into annual taxation and removing the licence fee goons altogether.

[Zero999]

It's a tax and one which affects the poor more, especially single women, who are disproportionately more likely to be prosecuted. The Left should be against it and want it abolished, but they won't do it, because the BBC are biased in favour of them.

The TV licence virtually unenforcable. Your TV will still work without one and you have no legal obligation to allow an inspector on to your property, which is the only way they can catch you. If they knock on your door, just tell them to bugger off. You can also make it illegal for them to visit by putting a sign on your door stating that "You've withdrawn the implied right of access to all Capita employees.". They only time you have to allow them in, if they have a warrant, but they won't be able to get one of those, without any evidence, which they won't get, if they're not allowed on to your property.

Note to the moderators: I'm not advocating anyone should break the law, but given the law is ambigious as well as immoral, I wouldn't blame anyone for breaking it.