

UK still has 13,000 black-and-white TVs - robin_reala
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20957218

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EliRivers
The TV licence inspectors are employees of whichever private company the
contract is with at the time (Capita last time I checked, but that was a while
ago). As such, they have no powers beyond those of any other citizen; their
doorstep tactics are essentially to ask if they can come in, ask to look
around, and try to catch people out in conversation.

The web has numerous examples of people with no TV, who have told the relevant
body this, and yet nonetheless receive an endless stream of threatening
letters. The letters tend to follow the same pattern; polite reminders to
harsh reminders to threats of discovery and huge fines, and then back to
polite reminders again. Essentially, their model is to assume that anyone
without a TV is lying, and does have a TV. It's probably quite effective and
certainly a lot cheaper than trying to keep track of who actually doesn't have
a TV.

So, if you've got a TV (that you use to receive broadcast transmissions - you
don't need a licence just to own the TV, you need it for some of its possible
uses) in the UK and you have no TV licence, you can be pretty sure that you
can ignore the letters and, should a private citizen working for Capita come
to the door, you need not answer or let them in or even talk to them. The only
way they could demand entry would be with a suitable court document and
accompanied by an officer of the court (who frankly has better things to do
with his time), but to get that document they need reasonable evidence, and
simply not having a TV licence is not actually considered evidence of
illegally using a TV to receive broadcast transmissions.

~~~
gadders
Are detector vans real? I know the Post Office IT arm used to have a massive
database of license payers and TV owners.

I was never sure whether the vans were more than an urban myth.

~~~
EliRivers
It was certainly possible to detect the operation of TVs once; the old-school
CRT boxes had big oscillators in that emitted EM radiation. I don't know about
modern TVs; for all I know they have a different method of operation now.

That said, it requires not just the equipment to do so, but also the
competence and training, and whilst it's not impossible, licence inspectors
are just whoever Capita managed to hire that month; maintaining a cadre of
competent people to operate that equipment would be a headache and an expense
that Capita simply aren't interested in.

Far, far cheaper to simply have that big list of addresses (I understand
they've got a list of every address in the UK that ever had a TV licence
associated with it) and just assume that every address on that list that
doesn't currently have a TV licence is a licence-dodger. Every so often it
presumably gets pruned for addresses that no longer exist, but otherwise the
rate of false positive will be a minor annoyance in the scheme and certainly
not worth the hassle and expense of more sophisticated methods. Threatening
letters and intimidating adverts do the job.

~~~
finnw
The detectors are still operated by the BBC, not the contractors. (I know 2
former BBC detection engineers, one of whom also operated the machine.)

They declined to tell me how the machine worked, sadly.

~~~
olgeni
Maybe it jammed the signal on prime time and then they just picked up the
angry screams from the windows.

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stuartk
It says there are 13,000 licences for black and white TV's, so I wonder how
many of those are just trying to get their licences cheap but actually own a
colour TV.

~~~
rcush
Why would someone pay for a TV license at all in that case?

~~~
mseebach
An irrational sense of not cheating quite as much. A vast overestimation of TV
Licensing's ability to detect you - something like correlating cable/satellite
subscription databases with license payers list (as if paying for cable, but
claiming to own a BW TV set isn't a red flag) and the nefarious detector vans.

~~~
pablobm
As for the detector vans: does anyone know if they actually exist?

Several times in the past I have looked up information on them, and all I find
seems to be in the realm of urban legend -slash- marketing ploy.

What is the physical principle behind this tech? Does anyone have reliable
information?

~~~
Mvandenbergh
The physical principle is that they detect the leakage from the local
oscillator in the superheterodyne receiver circuit.

I very much doubt that they exist now, if they ever did. It just isn't cost
efficient compared to sending out letters and low paid inspectors who peer
through windows looking for people watching TV.

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knightni
Blind people who still like to listen to television may be a significant cause
of this. They receive a 50% discount on both colour and b&w licenses, so from
their point of view there's probably little reason to upgrade from a black and
white television.

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raverbashing
According to the article the digital switchover is complete.

So this means people plugged a digital converter to their B&W TVs?

If I have children/grandchildren I hope they prevent me from doing something
like that.

~~~
arrrg
Why? If it’s working why change it? It only costs money and you will buy
something that is more complex and breaks more easily. If you don’t
particularly care about TV or the image quality, why wouldn’t you?

(During the last thirty years of their marriage my parents had two TVs, both
CRTs. Just now they bought a new plasma TV. They never buy the cheap stuff,
but they always try to use everything for as long as possible, a philosophy
I’m also quite fond of. Nevertheless I’m not holding my breath for this new TV
also lasting 15 years. The guy my parents bought it from – a nice gumpy old
fellow, excellent electrician but no longer really fitting into this world –
was pretty pessimistic about the prospects of this TV lasting any more than
four, five years. Oh, and this thing is a computer. You can access the
internet and install apps and all that crap. Nothing my parents will ever use,
but if you buy a good panel that’s what you get. If you want it or not. At
least it works perfectly fine as a dumb monitor for the cable box. Another of
these unpleasant things of the modern age. However, I wonder what happens when
Panasonic stops updating this TV, should it last that long, which it probably
will. Suddenly having an old TV is no longer harmless.)

~~~
raverbashing
Actually in this case there is a reason: power usage

I don't know how much energy an old vacuum tube TV consumes but it doesn't
seem to be a small number. Also the CRT uses a lot of energy as well.

(at least all B&W TVs I saw used vacuum tubes, as some of the (old) colour
TVs)

I'm not advocating for a 60' TV with bells and whistles, a 22', 24' LCD simple
TV should be fine

~~~
arrrg
I wouldn’t bother. Those TVs hardly matter and it’s not a way to reduce power
consumption. The problem will solve itself, as those using B&W TVs die out.

Every little bit doesn’t matter. That’s an ass backwards way of going about
reducing power consumption, like firing the gardner in the White House to
reduce the deficit.

------
jgrahamc
According to the TV licensing people there are roughly 25 million TV licenses
in the UK. So 0.05% of TV licenses are black and white. That's a tiny number
and not really surprising if you consider, say, an older person who has a
perfectly good working black and white TV set that they see no reason to
'upgrade' to colour.

Other stats show that around 2% of households in the UK do not have a TV (or
at least a license).

~~~
dagw
If the UK as anything like Sweden and if my circle of friends and
acquaintances are in any way representative, I'd estimate at least 70% of
people without a license have a TV.

~~~
thisone
There are also people(and I assume an increasing amount) who have a TV but
don't watch live to air telly (and so don't need a license).

As the numbers increase due to better on demand service, I'm betting the
television license rules will change.

~~~
dagw
In Sweden you have to pay if you own a TV capable of watching live to air
telly, irregardless of if you actually do or not. So unless you physically
remove the relevant electronics, you need a license, even if you're only using
it as a large computer monitor.

~~~
mseebach
In Denmark, the license is on TVs, any internet-enabled device or smartphone -
basically, anyone is covered. It's ridiculous that they haven't had the
decency to just make it a plain household-tax instead of this fake-pretend.

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blowski
A partially-sighted TV license for a B&W TV is £25, compared to £75 for a full
colour one. Ebay has quite a few B&W TVs available for £5-10.

There are 360,000 people registered as partially-sighted in the UK, although
around a third of those are over 75 (and so get a free license anyway). I
imagine this must count for a fair proportion of those 13,000 TVs.

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andyking
I was always under the impression that the licence was for the _tuner_ ,
rather than the actual TV screen. I know that you used to have to get a colour
licence if you owned a VCR, because it had a tuner capable of receiving and
recording pictures in colour.

Now that we've gone through digital switchover, there are no purely B&W TV
tuners - every digital set-top box can _receive_ colour pictures, even if the
TV can't _display_ them.

Surely, in this case, the Black and White licence is obsolete?

(Incidentally, I dropped my TV licence this year - I just wasn't using it
enough to justify the cost. What little TV I view now is on-demand through the
computer. With fibre-optic broadband - paid for with the money saved by not
having a TV licence - I can receive an HD picture on BBC iPlayer and it's
actually better than the old TV reception.)

~~~
Lozzer
If you're watching live (or nearly live) broadcast on iPlayer, you still
legally require a license:
[http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_tv_progs/...](http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_tv_progs/tvlicence)

~~~
andyking
I only watch iPlayer on-demand, once the programmes have been uploaded.

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mmahemoff
Being nitpicky, it's licenses, not TVs, so the number could be higher. 13,000
households claiming _at least_ one B&W and no colour.

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topbanana
I thought they had already stopped broadcasting analogue TV signals

~~~
dasmoth
They have, at least in the great majority of the UK.

You can get set top boxes to receive digital transmissions if you don't have a
suitable TV. I'm sure these would work with a B&W TV if you wanted. I believe
some groups (the elderly?) were offered subsidised set top boxes.

~~~
gpvos
I was wondering about how it would work actually. I don't think B&W TVs have
SCART inputs, so I suppose there are still settop boxes out there that can
output a PAL antenna signal?

~~~
arethuza
I'm pretty sure SCART outputs include composite video - which older BW TVs
might accept using a SCART to phone cable.

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kalleboo
I wonder what the uptake levels of HD would be if there was a discount on the
license fee for SD screens (basically the modern-day analog of the b/w ->
color switchover)

