Author Topic: For the countries which need Radio and TV licenses. How TV Detector Vans work...  (Read 11199 times)

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Online Analog Kid

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You didn't address my question: in the UK is that content sent over the air or by cable?
 

Offline Monkeh

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You didn't address my question: in the UK is that content sent over the air or by cable?

Yes.

Okay, less snarky: We have terrestrial transmission, cable, satellite, and streaming services covering broadcast television.
 

Online coppercone2

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

Online Analog Kid

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You didn't address my question: in the UK is that content sent over the air or by cable?

Yes.

Okay, less snarky: We have terrestrial transmission, cable, satellite, and streaming services covering broadcast television.

So therefore some customers get TV over the air, so it seems to me those would be the only ones where there's any kind of problem getting them to pay a license fee: anyone who uses a wire can be disconnected for non-payment.

Are there still a lot of over-the-air users there? Don't know what the figure is here in the US but I assume it's pretty small.
 

Offline Monkeh

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You didn't address my question: in the UK is that content sent over the air or by cable?

Yes.

Okay, less snarky: We have terrestrial transmission, cable, satellite, and streaming services covering broadcast television.

So therefore some customers get TV over the air, so it seems to me those would be the only ones where there's any kind of problem getting them to pay a license fee: anyone who uses a wire can be disconnected for non-payment.

The licence is not collected by the cable providers, and presence of cable does not imply use of TV services as they also offer internet connectivity.

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Are there still a lot of over-the-air users there? Don't know what the figure is here in the US but I assume it's pretty small.

Everyone, more or less. We pay a licence, it pays for a transmission network.
 

Offline coppice

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if a TV means you require a license what microscopic fraction of households doesn't need one?
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. We don't have a TV licence. 3 years ago when it came to renewal time we realised it was months since we had last watched anything requiring one, and the number of people like us seems to be growing quite rapidly from published licence figures.
 

Offline BrianHGTopic starter

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

This should demonstrate the initial functional point...
(DO this today...)

Get 1 FM radio and tune it to a blank station/static somewhere between 100mhz and 107mhz and keep listening.

Get a second old analog FM radio and manually tune its dial to ~10.7mhz below the the first radio and you will hear the static disappear as the first radio will now be tuned to the Local Oscillator of the second radio.

When I was a kid, I mangled an old clock radio with an audio jack tied through a cap to the supply voltage for the internal LO oscillation and made myself a pirate radio station which could be tuned in clearly for approximately 1 city block in both directions.

A TV van with a directional antenna can easily pick up any turned on radio and TV's LO within around a 2 to 4 house radius.  Since these vans use spectrum analyzers, they would see spikes for each channel come in and out as they would drive down a street.

In fact, during the second world war era, special radio tuners were developed which went through extravagant means to shield the LO from leaking out to prevent detection.   And you better believe that to do this, it was a nightmare.
As for someone with a RF spectrum which was designed to receive ~50 MHz to -> ~300 Mhz, you might be able to do this with a good SDR receiver which can sweep a wide band really fast.

Then all you need is an old TV set to a known channel or FM radio which radiates within that window and scan away.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2025, 01:36:17 am by BrianHG »
 

Offline BrianHGTopic starter

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You didn't address my question: in the UK is that content sent over the air or by cable?
I might be wrong, but when it comes to Cable TV in the UK, the cable TV package usually had the government TV licensing fee built in to the cable bill.  This spec I heard once from faded memory, so I am not sure.
 

Online Analog Kid

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You didn't address my question: in the UK is that content sent over the air or by cable?
I might be wrong, but when it comes to Cable TV in the UK, the cable TV package usually had the government TV licensing fee built in to the cable bill.  This spec I heard once from faded memory, so I am not sure.

I ask again: in the UK, do most people get their TV over the air or by cable?
 

Offline Monkeh

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You didn't address my question: in the UK is that content sent over the air or by cable?
I might be wrong, but when it comes to Cable TV in the UK, the cable TV package usually had the government TV licensing fee built in to the cable bill.  This spec I heard once from faded memory, so I am not sure.

I ask again: in the UK, do most people get their TV over the air or by cable?

Why do you ask the Canadian?

Nearly everyone has access to terrestrial transmissions. Whether they prefer to receive those or use a free or paid satellite or a paid cable service is their business and irrelevant to the collection of the licence.
 

Offline themadhippy

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do most people get their TV over the air or by cable

I got my tv from a shop.
 

Online Analog Kid

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Nearly everyone has access to terrestrial transmissions.

Yeah, I got that; same sitch here in the US. Everyone (for the most part, except those way out in the boonies) has access to over-the-air signals; few use that, though, compared to cable/satellite users.

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Whether they prefer to receive those or use a free or paid satellite or a paid cable service is their business and irrelevant to the collection of the licence.

But the question is still unanswered:

Do most people in the UK get their TV over the air or from cable?

Sheesh. It's not that hard a question.

(My guess™ is "no".)
 

Offline Monkeh

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But the question is still unanswered:

Do most people in the UK get their TV over the air or from cable?

Sheesh. It's not that hard a question.

(My guess™ is "no".)

I answered it several posts ago, actually.

Would it help if I explain that around half the population doesn't even have access to cable?
 

Online Analog Kid

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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 ...
 

Offline Monkeh

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

No, but that's a nice conclusion to leap to if you want to appease your guesses. As I said, just about everyone uses terrestrial - even those who have chosen to pay for cable or satellite very often only use those on one set out of several. I would put the number of TV watching households actively using terrestrial transmission far closer to 90% than 50%.

Quote
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 ...

Yes, we built a transmission infrastructure using the funding from the licence, because it was vastly more economic than running coax to every property.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2025, 04:25:22 am by Monkeh »
 

Online Analog Kid

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I would put the number of TV watching households actively using terrestrial transmission far closer to 90% than 50%.

So you couldn't have just fucking said that, say, about 10 posts ago?

Sheesh. I'm done.
 

Offline Monkeh

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I would put the number of TV watching households actively using terrestrial transmission far closer to 90% than 50%.

So you couldn't have just fucking said that, say, about 10 posts ago?

Sheesh. I'm done.

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Are there still a lot of over-the-air users there? Don't know what the figure is here in the US but I assume it's pretty small.

Everyone, more or less.

First world problems..
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Analog Kid: remember that current method of reception is meaningless relative to the topic of the thread, which was a historical situation.

Both in Europe and in North America TV distribution was virtually 100% over the air in the 1940s and 1950s.  In North America cable distribution started creeping in in the 1960s, mostly to address localities that were not economical to reach with over the air transmissions.  Valleys in mountainous regions, or small towns a long ways from places large enough to support a TV station.  Distribution of TV over cable in urban markets in the US was a late 1970s to 1980s phenomenon.  Addition of digital streaming another 10 years later.  I suspect that the pattern in Europe was not greatly different.

What has varied greatly over the world is the way of funding these transmissions. 

I don't believe that armies of vans covered the country reading LO transmissions.  But I find dozens of vans surveying selected markets very credible.  Remember the inverse square law works for you when you are close.  People demonstrate transoceanic transmission regularly with 10 W transmitters.  So a van driving by a house at a distance of 10 meters has a million to one signal strength advantage over the receiver across an ocean.  A 10 microwatt leakage is enough to get the same signal level.  There are bandwidth differences and a couple of other issues so it isn't quite as easy, but the leakage is often more than 10 microwatts as mentioned previously.  Be sure to check your intuition with numbers before you take a strong position on anything.
 

Online Analog Kid

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Both in Europe and in North America TV distribution was virtually 100% over the air in the 1940s and 1950s.  In North America cable distribution started creeping in in the 1960s, mostly to address localities that were not economical to reach with over the air transmissions.  Valleys in mountainous regions, or small towns a long ways from places large enough to support a TV station.  Distribution of TV over cable in urban markets in the US was a late 1970s to 1980s phenomenon.  Addition of digital streaming another 10 years later.  I suspect that the pattern in Europe was not greatly different.

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.

BTW, I've never had cable (or satellite) myself, and I do miss my old pre-digital OTA TV. But not much.
 

Offline m k

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I think you're missing something.

There are public and private broadcasters.
There are also commercial and non commercial broadcasters.

Later it changed so that broadcasters became content providers and actual broadcasters were different entities.

In UK the TV license is only for BBC, commercial ITV was not part of it.

Here those parts were YLE and MTV.
But the commercial part used public aerial transmitters.

Here a list of "rouge" addresses were judged illegal.
It's a tax like YLE payment now, so no "private eyes" needed anymore, and they were actually officials.
Advance-Aneng-Appa-AVO-Beckman-Danbridge-Data Tech-Fluke-General Radio-H. W. Sullivan-Heathkit-HP-Kaise-Kyoritsu-Leeds & Northrup-Mastech-OR-X-REO-Simpson-Sinclair-Tektronix-Tokyo Rikosha-Topward-Triplett-Tritron-YFE
(plus lesser brands from the work shop of the world)
 

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.
 

Offline Zero999

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I think you're missing something.

There are public and private broadcasters.
There are also commercial and non commercial broadcasters.

Later it changed so that broadcasters became content providers and actual broadcasters were different entities.

In UK the TV license is only for BBC, commercial ITV was not part of it.

Here those parts were YLE and MTV.
But the commercial part used public aerial transmitters.

Here a list of "rouge" addresses were judged illegal.
It's a tax like YLE payment now, so no "private eyes" needed anymore, and they were actually officials.
That's true, but a TV licence is still required to receive commerical broadcasts, even though the broadcasters don't receive any money from it.

... 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?
What makes you think it's a small number of households who don't need a TV licenece?

A TV licence isn't required to own a TV. It's only required to watch TV live, as it's being broadcast and iPlayer, the BBC's online streaming platform.

There are a large number of people nowadays who don't watch live TV or use iPlayer. They use other streaming services.

I dare say there are more of households who have a TV licence, but don't need one, than the other way round. That was the case for me. I stopped watching TV for awhile, then I realised, I no longer needed a licence, so I cancelled it.
 

Offline vk6zgo

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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.
 

Offline vk6zgo

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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.
 

Offline PlainName

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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.

That is so sensible I can't believe any government could accept it, never mind actually implement it  :-//
 


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