Well time to say a big "thanks" to all brits who pay that tax :-).
The rest of the world gets as a consequence the BBC Worldservice for free (here, in Sofia, we have it at FM...). Granted, lately it begins to turn more into BBC Africa or BBC India, but is still by far the highest quality radio available here (anywhere?).
So it is true then - they can obtain a warrant and you can't stop them. I just didn't mention the convoluted access process in the interests of brevity.
The website and radio player is worth the fee - I'm happy to pay it but I do resent having my arm twisted behind my back to do it.
When in the Military the TV licensing rules applied in barracks as well. So we needed to have Licenses.
We used to get Station Routine Orders once a week that were posted to all sections. We always noted the entry that read" the Station Commander has permitted the TV Licence Detector vehicles on to the unit between the dates ********* and *******. "
This was for security reasons.... obviously. They never did catch anyone. :-)
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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
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Well what you were saying was that the TV licensing people could come round every 2 months to check on you, which is unlikely given they'd need a new warrant every time.
They almost certainly won't have a warrant the first time they come.
But ironically, you don't need to pay the license fee to use these, the best of the service.
That's about $20 per month, and I could stand that. Meanwhile, you are avoiding the 30% of air time wasted on interminable commercials, not to mention the selling channels that are solid commercial. The BBC is respected world-wide.
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Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
In reality it's pretty unusual that they would need one because most people would give in out of fear or ignorance and let them in. The rumour that they don't need a warrant spread pretty far and wide and many folk still believe it. In fact TV licensing do very well out of the rumour network and a lot of misinformation is being actively encouraged.
Detector vans are one such thing. Chris mentioned them coming onto his base but I wonder if any actually did or whether the detector van was really just a man in a van with a list of properties that don't have licenses. I, for one, have never seen a detector van and never met anyone that has. I've spoken to a technician at the BBC who says that they are just propeganda but then perhaps the "conspiracy theory" rumour mill is more effective than the Beeb's?
I'm not entirely sure what the detector vans are actually detecting but this talk of being able to detect TVs which are off must be rubbish - there's no mechanism by which that could work. Is there?
I'm not 100% sure that's true. I reckon if you are in the UK and receiving broadcast material - i.e. streaming the news - then you are in possession of equipment capable of receiving TV and are using it and thus should have a license. Maybe the internet is exempt?
Somebody in government must have screwed up in Canada big time we have the best of both worlds and a publically funded CBC radio and TV networks and no receiver licences. CBC radio is advertising free. CBC TV competes with several privately funded networks for ad revenue. There were receiver licenses up to the middle of WW 2. Part of CBC radio's mandate is to provide coverage to the whole country not a small task for a country that is 4 and 1/2 time zones wide and 1/8 the circumference of the earth high. (we could have measured Canada in rods :)
Yes that is what they do. They point their aerials at properties that don't have licenses. In our case on a unit we just didn't turn the TV on for the 2 days they were on the unit. :-)
The othr scam we pulled in on unit was that we had one of the largest single barrack blocks between West Point and the Iron Curtain. So we got a license "for the block" and all the TV's were technically owned by the person with the license.
Unfortunately they decided that the block was like a block of flats and each room with a TV needed a license. We promised to get one for next time.... be which time we were all posted somewhere else. :-)
They have a list of addresses with TV licenses. If you live in an area where every house has a TV license you will never see a detector van.
No, they are real but they don't need so many of them now the system is computerised and it is far easier to know who has a licence. Therefore you have much better idea who doesn't
The detect the IF which is only on when the TV receiver circuit is powered up. SO no. they can't detect a TV that is OFF but........
Many people think the TV is off when it is on standby. The screen is off but the receiver is on and the IF is there. On modern digital sets they probably can't find it on standby as more of the circuitry is off. .
I will let you fight that one in court......:-)
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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
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Nope. He isn't dangerous. Until someone tries to attack, that is.
Whether dogs behave or not mostly depends on the owner. Ours are very loving to children, especially little ones. They are also on occasion used to socialize guide dogs in training.
Don't let them get that bad. I am still puzzled that there wasn't a major opposition formed in Germany against that.
At one point, the German broadcast tax collection agency sent bills to airlines, about radio fees for all their planes. Why? Well, some of the receivers in a plane can, technically, receive FM radio --- it's right next to the VOR band, after all. Now a sane person might observe that listening to FM radio while flying must be an immediate firing/license-loss offence for any pilot, and conclude that this should have put an immediate stop to that notion. Well, think again :-O
Sure? I'd think that the easiest to detect (at least in the good olden days of actual CRTs in TV sets) would be the horizontal frequency. For three reasons:
1) the TV designer has less of a choice for this signal than for the receiver's mixing frequencies --- it's hardcoded into the image itself.
2) the horizontal deflection unit, as it has to actually do some work, would be transmitting a rather more powerful signal than the encapsulated, small-signal receiver section
3) 31 kHz might stand a better chance of making it through walls than the receiver's intermediate frequencies.
Pretty soon they'll send the bills to everyone because they'll always find something electronic in the house. For example a Krups mixer with a speed control. Now you could potentially open it, pry the diode out of its rectifier, hook it up to a long wire and to headphones, and listen in ...
The same with any licensing authority/local authority/government body.
The last time I saw a dtector van was about 40 years ago!
These days with multi-occupancy of buildings, multiple TV sets it would be be difficult to be sure where the set(s) were.
Probably several methods when ON, including the methods of tuning to a screen, just like can be done to pick up CRTs attached to computers. Hence Tempest strength computers and buildings for military, etc..
I doubt any method would be satisfactory for sets turned off.
In those circumstances I would want to see the Calibration and Test certification.
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Paul Carpenter | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
PC Services
GNU H8 & mailing list info
For those web sites you hate
Easiest - may be. But detecting the tuners oscillator (this is how they do it IIRC) yields also information which channel the TV-set is tuned to. I believe this is what Chris meant by "IF", the intermediate frequency itself would be harder to measure. The technology has been around for decades, BTW. AFAIK this is one of the methods they use (driving such vans on the streets and couting) to detect mmmm.. the English word escapes me, "Einschaltsquoten" :-).
I'm quite sure it's not. Viewer ratings are acquired from a supposedly representative sample of specially equipped "test customers" --- households with modified TV sets, a data line to the ratings agency, and viewer presence determination (originally a manual button press, now probably some technological approach).
Second the motion. Unfortunately, CBC is not as available within the USA as is the BBC. One of their outstanding achievements was the broadcast of the Montreal Olympics. The NBC coverage here has totally offended me ever since.
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Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
I know they do use the method you describe - this is how they do it here, in Bulgaria, for example - but I remember someone telling me they do it the way I described. Now I am not sure about that, this is why I put an "AFAIK", but I do remember a guy telling me that (quite some time ago in Cologne) so I would not rule it out so easily. Do you know for sure that's how they measure the viewer ratings (thanks for helping me with the word :), I mean those one can see in the ARD videotext? If you know it, perhaps Juergen was wrong back then or things have changed or they do measure it this way but for other puprposes... :-).
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