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TV detector van

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Re: TV detector van

#61

Post by Scoundreller »

tantalor wrote: post #16
agurk wrote: post #7

I lived in a flat in England in the early 2000s which kept getting letters from the BBC saying we didn't have a TV licence. The letters were sometimes more threatening for a period, then sometimes more reconciliatory. They were also running TV adverts at the time claiming they had detector vans about, and if you didn't have a licence you'd be caught. I did some research at the time, and it seemed that evidence from a…

> evidence from a detector van had never been submitted How could it be, if the mechanism behind the detector is not made public? Prosecutor: This machine says you are guilty. Defendant: How does that machine work? Prosecutor: You aren't allowed to know. Defendant: ??? Judge: Case dismissed.

Sounds like typical legal stances on breathalyzers, speed cameras and red light cameras.

Re: TV detector van

#62

Post by tomxor »

djmobley wrote: post #53
tomxor wrote: post #43

You might think these vans were crazy then, what's more crazy today is how they continue to force their opt-out licensing upon everyone like it's still 1946 and they are the only broadcasters in town. If you live in the UK and own a TV you must pay the BBC whether you want the BBC or not! I'm one of the minority who don't own a TV in the UK and even then they make it their business to inform me every two years about…

To be clear, a licence is required to watch live TV on any channel, not just the BBC.

I wonder how they define "live TV"? If i watch a live video stream over the internet does it count?

I suspect they basically mean the reception of any terrestrial RF TV signal not really caring about it being live, but due to not wanting to go to the trouble of differentiating between BBC and freeview?

Re: TV detector van

#63

Post by mytailorisrich »

wyldfire wrote: post #8

While reading I thought, "for sure we will get to the part of the article where the British realized their folly and discontinued the licensing." But that part never came. Brits: is this for real, does this still exist? Do you pay a license to use your TV? Is it only for OTA programming or using the device in general?

The best part of the TV licence, I think, is that blind people get a 50% discount.

Re: TV detector van

#64

Post by bcaa7f3a8bbc »

noodlesUK wrote: post #13

This is such nonsense. In my opinion the BBC should be paid for by a proper tax, as an informed public benefits everyone, or they should just give up on calling it a license. The people going around houses just send threatening letters, and act as though they have some right to enter your home and inspect it (they don't). They go around terrorising people who don't know their rights, but don't watch TV anyway. I rout…

It's not only the UK. After the war, Japan used BBC as a model for the national broadcasting media, and the NHK essentially copied the same BBC TV license policy, including its aggressive attempts to collect TV fees (although the NHK doesn't have TV detector vans...) It has been challenged in courts but the verdict, just like the BBC, is that the fee is mandatory if you watch TV.

Re: TV detector van

#65

Post by lordnacho »

excalibur wrote: post #25
noodlesUK wrote: post #13

This is such nonsense. In my opinion the BBC should be paid for by a proper tax, as an informed public benefits everyone, or they should just give up on calling it a license. The people going around houses just send threatening letters, and act as though they have some right to enter your home and inspect it (they don't). They go around terrorising people who don't know their rights, but don't watch TV anyway. I rout…

The British government has a legal obligation to conduct all business in the least sensible manner available. It's in the Magna Carta.

In fact the system of government is derived from strange ladies lying in lakes distributing swords.

Re: TV detector van

#66

Post by henryfjordan »

jarvist wrote: post #32
dsr_ wrote: post #15

The warrant revealed that a BBC contractor had used an "optical detector" to reveal the possible presence of a TV.[10] The warrant stated that: "the optical detector in the detector van uses a large lens to collect that light and focus it on to an especially sensitive device, which converts fluctuating light signals into electrical signals, which can be electronically analysed. If a receiver is being used to watch br…

No, it sounds like a telescope focusing onto a single pixel (i.e. just the back of the curtains), and then using the output from this pixel with a lock-in amplifier tied to the broadcast signal. The sensitivity would be enormous due to the lock-in. With a CRT you would be able to do this with In today's LCD world, I guess something similar could be done for a whole pixel-average of a whole frame, and then look at the…

So it's using a telescope and a camera to see what's going on in your house (albeit hopefully in a very limited way)...

In the US that'd be an illegal search without a warrant.

Re: TV detector van

#67

Post by mattmanser »

rtkwe wrote: post #29
oxidising wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay the licence fee to fund the BBC. They make some amazing documentaries (Planet Earth, Blue Planet etc). They also have radio stations, all advert free. Being advert free is rare these days.

That's fine, a well funded public broadcaster is a great idea. The question is why in the world is it done as a license fee instead of as a much simpler to implement tax or a subscription where the OTA broadcasts are encrypted and a fee is paid to maintain the ability to decrypt.

It's political. There's no parliamentary support for a general tax, but no public support for getting rid of the BBC. The Tories in particular hate the Beeb, but the public love it (contrary to the rather negative comments here).

So the tax lives on in this archaic form instead and every now and then when the Tories are in power they try and defund or threaten the BBC somehow. Usually within a year of getting elected, and then there's a backlash and they have to back down.

The latest wheeze was to force the BBC to get pensioners to pay, and they managed to pull it off by getting the public to blame the BBC instead of the government.

Re: TV detector van

#68

Post by heavenlyblue »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #59
djmobley wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect advice that could get someone convicted. A licence is required if you watch live TV on any channel. See: https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ95

Netflix and Amazon prime are not TV and don't require a TV licence. https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ104 But indeed, watching any channel on TV (not just the BBC) requires a licence.

I think they make it incredibly clear in their message though:

If you’re watching live TV, you need to be covered by a TV Licence:

   a. if you’re watching on TV or on an online TV service 
   b. for all channels, not just the BBC
   c. ...

Re: TV detector van

#69

Post by velox_io »

Wistar wrote: post #40
DanBC wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a licence if you watch live TV as it's broadcast, or if you watch BBC iPlayer catchup content. You need a licence for any device that you watch live tv as it's broadcast. You need a licence to watch live tv, no matter where it's broadcast from. The wording of the law says "installed or used to receive", so in theory you need a licence if you have eg a tv plugged into an aerial. They don't prosecute those cas…

Record and time-shift it so that it is no longer "live TV?"

The was quite a while where iPlayer was covered by their law, there was another loophole where if your watching it on an untethered device (on a battery with wifi) that wasn't covered either, but I'm not sure now...

The whole law is antiquated, now you don't need them or their transmission equipment. I do believe that if they move to a subscription model they will lose many customers, especially those with Netflix etc (I don't even know if the aerial cable in my flat works or even own a tv, I use a 43" monitor if I do want to watch anything).

Re: TV detector van

#70

Post by NikkiA »

saagarjha wrote: post #3

How do these work? Is a TV somehow different than a large monitor?

You look for the IF from the tuner, almost all tuners are made using the exact same frequency building blocks, and thus the tuner can easily be detected and knowing which channel it is tuned to.

There's a reason all the BBC channels are on the same DTV mux with ITV & others on different muxes - it means the BBC channels that require a license are all on the same tuner frequency for a local area.

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