DAK if these TV Licensing bullies have any actual authority?

[stewamax]

If you do neither, and ignore this letter, your address will be treated as unlicenced.

Being a harassing bully is one thing, but spelling unlicensed as unlicenced is tantamount to GBH. I blame the schools; when was flogging banned?

[didds]

Long, long ago I 'heard'/'understood' that it was either from a signal generated by the line-flyback circuitry in CRT TVs or RF from the tuner's local oscillator. Don't know how true any of that ever was.

That's my understanding, albeit gleaned from others etc.

For sure, even if it WAS measurable 50+ years ago, I've never really beleived they were capable of identifying which channel was being watched, in which room of a house, let alone in a heavily built up housing area eg small terraced houses, or multiple flats in one house with different TVs in close proximity. I've always suspected such claims as being bovine manure.


didds

[AF62]

Along the same lines, and also being a bit facetious here, one thing that emits from a post CRT TV is light, so if they manage to peek in through a window they could "detect" it. Maybe the detector in a TV detector van is the driver!

You joke, but that is pretty much how their enforcement teams work these days.

Pick a non-wealthy area with a list of house’s without a tv licence and send a team out in the early evening to knock on doors. Door opens and if they hear the sounds of a tv the questioning begins, and usually the person incriminates themselves.

That is one of the reasons why most people convicted for not having a tv licence are women (76% of prosecutions are women). They are at home in the early evening when the enforcers knock on the door and are more likely to be browbeaten by the male enforcement teams into signing a confession.

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/gen ... arity-AB23

In fact 30% of all criminal convictions for women is having been prosecuted for not having a tv licence - https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/27/one-of-t ... -13664335/

And them not using the same tactics in wealthy areas - multiple reasons.

To hard to access the property without being obvious. Front door doesn’t open straight onto the living room with the tv so they can’t hear it. Owners are more likely not to be fooled by the spiel and won’t allow access or incriminate themselves, and actually are more likely to genuinely not need a tv licence and therefore to give the enforcement team a hard time for calling.

[Bminusrob]

Along the same lines, and also being a bit facetious here, one thing that emits from a post CRT TV is light, so if they manage to peek in through a window they could "detect" it. Maybe the detector in a TV detector van is the driver!

You joke, but that is pretty much how their enforcement teams work these days.

Pick a non-wealthy area with a list of house’s without a tv licence and send a team out in the early evening to knock on doors. Door opens and if they hear the sounds of a tv the questioning begins, and usually the person incriminates themselves.

That is one of the reasons why most people convicted for not having a tv licence are women (76% of prosecutions are women). They are at home in the early evening when the enforcers knock on the door and are more likely to be browbeaten by the male enforcement teams into signing a confession.

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/gen ... arity-AB23

In fact 30% of all criminal convictions for women is having been prosecuted for not having a tv licence - https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/27/one-of-t ... -13664335/

And them not using the same tactics in wealthy areas - multiple reasons.

To hard to access the property without being obvious. Front door doesn’t open straight onto the living room with the tv so they can’t hear it. Owners are more likely not to be fooled by the spiel and won’t allow access or incriminate themselves, and actually are more likely to genuinely not need a tv licence and therefore to give the enforcement team a hard time for calling.

Juxtapose this fact (30% of all criminal convictions for women...) against this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/0 ... o-boasted/ and the fact that the BBC wriggled and squirmed, and tried to make excuses, and you seriously wonder about the TV license's future.

[Lootman]

Pick a non-wealthy area with a list of house’s without a tv licence and send a team out in the early evening to knock on doors. Door opens and if they hear the sounds of a tv the questioning begins, and usually the person incriminates themselves.

That is one of the reasons why most people convicted for not having a tv licence are women (76% of prosecutions are women). They are at home in the early evening when the enforcers knock on the door and are more likely to be browbeaten by the male enforcement teams into signing a confession.

Reminds me of what happened to a friend of mine in the 1980s. An "enforcer" knocked on his door and he answered it. It was an open plan house and from the doormat the enforcer could clearly see and hear the TV working.

He asked "Do you have a TV" and my friend answered "No" even though he very obviously did have one. There was of course an ensuing exchange but my friend just kept denying everything.

Then the enforcer left. No follow up. Always stand your ground.

[bungeejumper]

It was an open plan house and from the doormat the enforcer could clearly see and hear the TV working.

He asked "Do you have a TV" and my friend answered "No" even though he very obviously did have one. There was of course an ensuing exchange but my friend just kept denying everything.

Then the enforcer left. No follow up. Always stand your ground.

Okay, that was in the 1980s, and at that time you needed a BBC licence just to plug your TV into the wall. Nowadays people play games, watch Netflix or Sky, and watch other catch-up channels besides iPlayer (for which you do still need a licence). Otherwise you have nothing to fear from the investigator seeing your TV working.

The licensing squad used to claim that they could tell which channel you were watching, just by parking the detector van outside in the road. But even sixty years ago, my parents were telling me that the so-called aerial on the van was a bluff, and that if you'd opened the van doors you'd have found two men inside drinking tea.

BJ

[Mike4]

It was an open plan house and from the doormat the enforcer could clearly see and hear the TV working.

He asked "Do you have a TV" and my friend answered "No" even though he very obviously did have one. There was of course an ensuing exchange but my friend just kept denying everything.

Then the enforcer left. No follow up. Always stand your ground.

Okay, that was in the 1980s, and at that time you needed a BBC licence just to plug your TV into the wall. Nowadays people play games, watch Netflix or Sky, and watch other catch-up channels besides iPlayer (for which you do still need a licence). Otherwise you have nothing to fear from the investigator seeing your TV working.

The licensing squad used to claim that they could tell which channel you were watching, just by parking the detector van outside in the road. But even sixty years ago, my parents were telling me that the so-called aerial on the van was a bluff, and that if you'd opened the van doors you'd have found two men inside drinking tea.

BJ

I think it must all be kid-ology because if they really could detect you watching telly, there would have been court cases where they produced their technical evidence and won. And in this era of information exchange, such cases would have propagated throughout social media.

The thing I find odd though is that TV License enforcement staff (or ex-staff) never seem to pop up in these discussions on forums, facebook etc, spilling the beans on what they can and can't do.

[AF62]

I think it must all be kid-ology because if they really could detect you watching telly, there would have been court cases where they produced their technical evidence and won.

Kid-ology - possibly, possibly not.

But even if it existed it it is still far easier and safer just to put into evidence a signed confession than have to have a technical expert turn up to argue the case, which if they lost would have a significant impact on future enforcement action.

And that’s what they do - browbeat the householder by saying that everything they are saying is being conducted under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. And after the householder has admitted that they are watching tv and they don’t have a license, then their usual process is to get them to agree to buy one backdated to when the last one expired.

But the trick they use is recording it all as a note and then saying “could you sign here” - and people do, because there is an official dressed in a Blackshirt fake uniform who has intimidated they have legal powers (even though they don’t) by quoting PACE.

Then when people don’t pay for the backdated licence because they can’t afford it, which was the main reason why they didn’t have one in the first place, then they are prosecuted using their confession.

As for identifying a household using a tv without a licence. Twenty years ago if you knocked on 1,000 doors of houses that didn’t have a licence then I doubt you would have run out of fingers counting those who didn’t have a tv and didn’t need a licence.

Today with streaming services it is somewhat different, but I doubt you would get anywhere near double digit percentages of those who didn’t.

So the old - wander out with a list of those who don’t have licences and knock on doors is still cheap and effective.

[mc2fool]

As for TV Detector Vans - not sure they ever really worked - and they almost certainly wouldn't now ...

We covered the principles of how they "could" work in comms as undergrads; with the caveat that the actually "worked" as a threat.
Certainly there's nothing emitting from a post CRT TV in any amplitude that you could use to identify a TV from a distance.

Long, long ago I 'heard'/'understood' that it was either from a signal generated by the line-flyback circuitry in CRT TVs or RF from the tuner's local oscillator. Don't know how true any of that ever was.

IIRC both; fly back (at 625 * 25 hz) indicated a demodulated CRT signal and then you could pickup up the colour subcarrier oscillator also.

According to Wikipedia "Around ten generations of detector van technology were used" and it goes on to describe three of them.

"The first detector was introduced in 1952. It operated by detecting the magnetic field, rather than any radio signal, of the horizontal line-scanning deflection within the cathode ray tube. Television tubes, unlike oscilloscopes, used magnetic deflection. The deflection current was a sawtooth with a frequency of 10.125 kHz."

"By 1963* the second British TV network, ITV, had begun transmission. This made the original system of TV detection increasingly unworkable. The two networks did not have their line-scan signals accurately synchronised. If two nearby TVs were each tuned to different channels, they then created a beat frequency effect which could swamp the TV detector. The original magnetic low-frequency detector system was also suffering because TV design had improved to radiate less of a magnetic field, and also the increasing number of cars made interference from their ignition circuits greater. A new detection system was required and this would rely on detecting leakage signals from the local oscillator used in superheterodyne radio receiver circuits."

* ITV began before 1963 and I think that actually refers to the journal linked to below.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to lookup the rest, however the various editions of The Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal referred to describe three of the detector van technologies in detail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van
https://archive.org/details/poeej195207/page/n1/mode/2up (July 1952)
https://archive.org/details/poeej196301/page/n1/mode/2up (January 1963)
https://archive.org/details/poeej196910/page/n1/mode/2up (October 1969)

The Wikipedia page says on Flat-screen TVs, "A 2013 study was conducted on television emissions detection by Markus G. Kuhn.[11] This found that emissions from modern sets were still detectable, but that it was increasingly difficult to relate these to the received signal, and thus to correlate a set's emissions with a particular licensed broadcast. The sets radiated from a number of sources, particularly the display controller and its low-voltage differential signaling link to the LCD panel."

[XFool]

According to Wikipedia "Around ten generations of detector van technology were used" and it goes on to describe three of them.

"The first detector was introduced in 1952. It operated by detecting the magnetic field, rather than any radio signal, of the horizontal line-scanning deflection within the cathode ray tube. Television tubes, unlike oscilloscopes, used magnetic deflection. The deflection current was a sawtooth with a frequency of 10.125 kHz."

Good old 405 lines! (25 x 405)

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to lookup the rest, however the various editions of The Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal

Now, why didn't I think of that.

Anyway, I just pay the licence.

https://archive.org/details/poeej196910/page/n1/mode/2up


"Telecommunications in the Next 30 Years"

"viewphone"

[mc2fool]

P.S. Interesting -- as in ambiguous -- FOI on the matter:

Request: "I have heard from various sources that your TV detector vans cannot actually detect if someone is watching telly. Please could you advise if this is the case and disclose any relevant information as to whether these vans are effectively an empty threat or not?"

Response: "Whilst this is a query rather than a request for recorded information, I can tell you outside the scope of the Act that TV Licensing detector vans do exist and are an effective means of enforcement. We do publish information about how we enforce the licence and this is available on the TV Licensing website at the web-link below. However, please note that specific details about our detection activity and capabilities are exempt from disclosure under section 31 of the Act which relates to law enforcement."

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/421818/response/1026361/attach/4/RFI20171144%20response.pdf

[DiamondEcho]

sending me warnings that on <whatever> date a few weeks in the future I would be getting a visit from enforcement officers. I've had perhaps six appointments issued now but no-one ever turns up, disappointingly.

I wonder if they actually have any "enforcement officers"? Or whether that is just an intimidatory threat?

It's all a bit like the much-vaunted but rarely seen TV detector vans.

We're going through similar; just moved home with our one TV and keeping the previous home before selling it. That was c4months ago, and we changed the address on the license. That triggered enquiries at the moved-from address. They have now started again and yesterday I declared again we've no TV at the empty moved-from address.

More to the point a card was dropped off at the moved-from address a couple of weeks ago, with a name/date hand-written on it to say someone called to check we had no TV there. I really don't think you can win with these people. They can (politely) visit if they wish, properly and credibly ID'd etc., their crass insinuations and of continuing wrong-doing are what annoy me.

[Dod101]

Why do people not just pay their licence fee if they watch tv? They are breaking the law if not or certainly increasing the cost for the rest of us who do. Why all this clever stuff to try to avoid paying?

Dod

[Lanark]

Why do people not just pay their licence fee if they watch tv?

They don't have the money.

I have always wondered how it would go in court if you admitted to having a TV and having it turned on, but then claimed you were only listening to the sound and not 'watching or recording TV as it's being broadcast' how would they prove otherwise?

[Mike4]

Why do people not just pay their licence fee if they watch tv?

They don't have the money.

I have always wondered how it would go in court if you admitted to having a TV and having it turned on, but then claimed you were only listening to the sound and not 'watching or recording TV as it's being broadcast' how would they prove otherwise?

That's an interesting tack to take. ISTR back in the day the clever radio hams could tune into the TV sound channels and listen. I wonder if they needed a licence to do that. They were probably fully aware of the legal position as I believe it was quite a popular thing to do.

[Mike4]

Why do people not just pay their licence fee if they watch tv?

Turning that on its head, why do the licencing authorities believe everyone watches telly?

As Diamond says, its their crass assumption that every premises has a TV in use that grates. They don't start on you by asking, they just assume you must be breaking the law and proceed from there.

[mc2fool]

ISTR back in the day the clever radio hams could tune into the TV sound channels and listen. I wonder if they needed a licence to do that. They were probably fully aware of the legal position as I believe it was quite a popular thing to do.

I built a crystal set to do that, my first receiver. A hand wound coil, a variable capacitor, a diode and a pair of headphones. Oh, and a few feet of wire for an antenna. It wasn't very selective so although I tuned to the audio signal at 41.5MHz I also picked up the buzz of the video signal at 45MHz.

I never even thought of the legal position, but then I was a teenager ...

[UncleEbenezer]

I built a crystal set to do that, my first receiver. A hand wound coil, a variable capacitor, a diode and a pair of headphones. Oh, and a few feet of wire for an antenna. It wasn't very selective so although I tuned to the audio signal at 41.5MHz I also picked up the buzz of the video signal at 45MHz.

I never even thought of the legal position, but then I was a teenager ...

You got the telly on a crystal set?

I just got the wireless. From distant memory, BBC World Service was the only station where I could get reception good enough to enjoy. I was rather impressed: the quality of their news/current affairs coverage seemed so much better than domestic radio.

[mc2fool]

I built a crystal set to do that, my first receiver. A hand wound coil, a variable capacitor, a diode and a pair of headphones. Oh, and a few feet of wire for an antenna. It wasn't very selective so although I tuned to the audio signal at 41.5MHz I also picked up the buzz of the video signal at 45MHz.

I never even thought of the legal position, but then I was a teenager ...

You got the telly on a crystal set?

I just got the wireless. From distant memory, BBC World Service was the only station where I could get reception good enough to enjoy. I was rather impressed: the quality of their news/current affairs coverage seemed so much better than domestic radio.

I lived just a mile away from Crystal Palace.

[Mike4]

I built a crystal set to do that, my first receiver. A hand wound coil, a variable capacitor, a diode and a pair of headphones. Oh, and a few feet of wire for an antenna. It wasn't very selective so although I tuned to the audio signal at 41.5MHz I also picked up the buzz of the video signal at 45MHz.

I never even thought of the legal position, but then I was a teenager ...

You got the telly on a crystal set?

I just got the wireless. From distant memory, BBC World Service was the only station where I could get reception good enough to enjoy. I was rather impressed: the quality of their news/current affairs coverage seemed so much better than domestic radio.

It still is, although there is a lot of shared content between WS and R4. I often listen to WS in the night when my 'going to sleep' reflex won't work and the difference in the news reporting is quite marked.

Another effect is WS often carries programmes later broadcast on R4, so given a lot of R4 content gets broadcast three times over, I get to hear it four times!

All off-topic for DAK though so I won't go on about it.