TV licence

[Mel]

Just reading the Caravan Basics bit of the PC magazine. Under "other rules and regulations IT states:
TVs used in caravans are covered by the owner's domestic TV licence so long as the caravan occupants are resident where the licence is registered and TVs at home are not used at the same time. . ( my italics)

Seriously! TVs at home not to be used at the same time! How often do we leave another adult at home who will turn the TV on. Granted the chances of a TV detector van being outside my house and outside my caravan at the same time seems pretty unlikely, but is this really the law?
Mel

 

[Craigyoung]

Mel , I to had to laugh at that when i read it the other day to wondering how they would know if we were away or not , but I have heard that that statement is true .

Craig .

 

[Sproket]

Just reading the Caravan Basics bit of the PC magazine. Under "other rules and regulations IT states:
TVs used in caravans are covered by the owner's domestic TV licence so long as the caravan occupants are resident where the licence is registered and TVs at home are not used at the same time. . ( my italics)

Seriously! TVs at home not to be used at the same time! How often do we leave another adult at home who will turn the TV on. Granted the chances of a TV detector van being outside my house and outside my caravan at the same time seems pretty unlikely, but is this really the law?
Mel

TVs and use at home

 

[Dustydog]

Just reading the Caravan Basics bit of the PC magazine. Under "other rules and regulations IT states:
TVs used in caravans are covered by the owner's domestic TV licence so long as the caravan occupants are resident where the licence is registered and TVs at home are not used at the same time. . ( my italics)

Seriously! TVs at home not to be used at the same time! How often do we leave another adult at home who will turn the TV on. Granted the chances of a TV detector van being outside my house and outside my caravan at the same time seems pretty unlikely, but is this really the law?
Mel

TVs and use at home

Thanks Sproket. SWMBO is ok watching Hoby City while I record World at War at home.

 

[Parksy]

.......Granted the chances of a TV detector van being outside my house and outside my caravan at the same time seems pretty unlikely, but is this really the law?
Mel

Reports suggest what many of us have suspected for years Mel, tv detector vans were a propaganda con trick to scare people into buying a tv licence.
They no longer exist anyway since the contract for tv licences was taken off the post office.

 

[WoodlandsCamper]

Detector vans were not a con trick (Edit - the vans themselves may have been a con but the technology was available) , they could pick up the high energy emitted from a cathode ray tube (CRT) type television and recreate it on a screen in their van thus watching the same channel that was being viewed in the house. The same was also being done by industrial spies by picking up signals from the CRT screens of computers. Nowadays, of course, most people have LCD TV and computer screens so the eaves dropping can't be done. In the case of TVs that is why the law changed so people had to declare their address when buying a TV such that it could be added to the database and the authorities check for a license.

Regarding the eaves dropping on computers I have attended a demonstration of this where the lecturer bought basic items from Maplins and used them to pick up the screen info from a computer over 100 feet away. With more sophisticated equipment the world is your oyster.

 

[Parksy]

I've no doubt that the technology to detect magnetic fields and CRT emissions via oscillators existed in one form or another, but the fact remains that not one single prosecution has ever been pursued which involved the use of tv detection equipment of any sort.
The BBC has been consistently unwilling to divulge the methods supposedly used by electronic tv detection equipment despite repeated requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
A prosecution relies upon evidence to succeed, therefore if the information as to how the unlicensed tv receiver was detected is unavailable or witheld no verdict as to guilt or innocence could possibly be given.
Of course the Post Office / BBC have long had acess to a massive data base which is used to prosecute tv licence defaulters.
I agree that the vans themselves were a con trick, often parked in areas which had been revealed to be 'licence avoidance blackspots' to persuade defaulters to pay up, and they were probably successful in achieving that aim.
Post Office engineers who were seconded to van duty called it 'flag waving,' and licencing officers could bluff their way into premises by hinting at the mysterious capabilities of these vans and hand held equipment. :evil:
The authorities smoke and mirrors act continues to this day apparently, I'm told that 'GPS signals' are now being invoked to encourage the avoiders to pay up. :lol:
Any motorist will know that GPS signals are used for navigation purposes, an electronic map so to speak, so perhaps the licencing authority operatives use sat nav to find the addresses from the now computerised database?

 

[Sproket]

BBC / GPO :woohoo: :woohoo:

Faq 73

 

[Woodentop]

I've no doubt that the technology to detect magnetic fields and CRT emissions via oscillators existed in one form or another, but the fact remains that not one single prosecution has ever been pursued which involved the use of tv detection equipment of any sort.
The BBC has been consistently unwilling to divulge the methods supposedly used by electronic tv detection equipment despite repeated requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
A prosecution relies upon evidence to succeed, therefore if the information as to how the unlicensed tv receiver was detected is unavailable or witheld no verdict as to guilt or innocence could possibly be given.
Of course the Post Office / BBC have long had acess to a massive data base which is used to prosecute tv licence defaulters.
I agree that the vans themselves were a con trick, often parked in areas which had been revealed to be 'licence avoidance blackspots' to persuade defaulters to pay up, and they were probably successful in achieving that aim.
Post Office engineers who were seconded to van duty called it 'flag waving,' and licencing officers could bluff their way into premises by hinting at the mysterious capabilities of these vans and hand held equipment. :evil:
The authorities smoke and mirrors act continues to this day apparently, I'm told that 'GPS signals' are now being invoked to encourage the avoiders to pay up. :lol:
Any motorist will know that GPS signals are used for navigation purposes, an electronic map so to speak, so perhaps the licencing authority operatives use sat nav to find the addresses from the now computerised database?

Eh?

The Post Office has had nothing to do with TV licencing for years - it is all don by the TV Licencing Office a.k.a. Capita.

 

[Parksy]

The old detector vans which we were discussing were used by the post office.
Capita have been the BBC's preferred partner since 2012.
No matter who the BBC use to collect unpaid licence fees the fact remains that there has never been a case of evidence obtained using a detector van or portable detector equipment presented in court during the prosecution of an alleged licence fee evader. Click Here for details of a FoI request which the BBC eventually had to reply to, albeit reluctantly.
TV Detector vans have been a useful bogey man tool over the years but their supposed effectiveness is a complete myth.
Inspectors who are well trained in methods to secure evidence rely on the database to identify evaders.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Ahmm,

The old debate about efficacy of TV detector vans.

It is perfectly possible and was ably demonstrated to me as a student that with some fairly rudimentary receivers, it was possible to detect if a crt device was being operated and you could glean a fair estimate of what was being watched by comparing the emissions patterns with broadcast comparisons. Things like a significant change in the luminance signal coinciding with a change of scene. By monitoring rf signature with the pictures on another set and changing stations, over a short period you could with a fair degree of certainty say the set in question was tuned to a particular broadcast based on the coincidence of changes in the signal. This was helped becasue there were only 4 TV channels, and becasue the sets were analoge it meant that all tv's would be in sync with the broadcast.

A lot has happened in the last 40 years which will have made such a simple process several magnitudes more difficult.

The video player and games consoles and computers which did not require the use of an off air reviver, meant that for the first time people could have a legitimate use for a CRT that did not mean they were watching broadcast television.

The demise of the CRT based television in favour of LED and LCD sets has reduced the emissions from TV's AND there is far more RF traffic in ether from mobile phones, WiFi and other devices which means any tv signals will be buried in the seething mass of other signals.

The digital sets also introduce a few seconds delay as they decode the digital signals, which means the method I mentioned above of looking at the luminance signature becomes very difficult as they will be out of sync. Go to any TV retailer as watch the screens and you will find that some have more delays than others!

The number of TV channels has grown to hundreds, so its would be even more difficult to manually find the channel with the same signature changes.

And programme makers are including far more scene changes per minute now compared to the later part of the 20th century, so this would make differentiating one channel from another less clear.

TV detector vans could realistically only identify the direction of a CRT signal, they could not tell you how far away it was. They would either have to have quite sofisticated timing systems like radar to give a range or they would have moved the van to triangulate the position.

As to whether evidence from TV vans were ever successful in obtaining a licence prosecution, I don't know. But it seems likely that they may have been used to indicate if a CRT was being used at a premisesn that was apprently unlicenced. The detector vans evidence by its self would not be sufficient evidence to pursue a prosecution. It would still require the evidence of a licensing authority officer to physically visit and either witness a TV in use or obtain a confession from the property owner.

 

[Dustydog]

Ohhh And there was me thinking they played spot the aerial :cheer:

 

[WoodlandsCamper]

Ohhh And there was me thinking king they played spot the aerial :cheer:

That's why ours has been in the loft for over 30 years. Benefits of being in a strong signal area.

 

[Raywood]

Frankly I think being caught if there is someone using the TV at home is not feasible. To catch you they would have to enter the site and most have barriers making this difficult and then check who is using a TV. Having done that they would have to establish your home address which could be anywhere and send someone there to check. The logistics would be impossible to arrange so it will not happen.

 

[bertieboy1]

Personally I think the whole thing is a big con,I've never ever seen a detector van,of course they use a list with everyones name and address on it that has a license and based on the assumption that every household has a tv they visit houses that don't appear on the list.
They cannot prove that you are using a television when away in the van and someone at home is watching tv simultaneously.