Love it!!!!!

Heehee yX-D 😂! Bravo (/^v^)~ ❤️🥇🏆

No such thing, just scare tactics.

There was, but they didn't work that well.@@laurencecope7083

Uh... they were using a Watchman, clearly. Loads of Watchmans out there.

It picked up the local Intermediate Frequency oscillator in your analogue TV to see if it was switched on

I know where a van was kept in the early 90s, by pushing my face against the blackened windows I could see the back was completely empty 😂

@@1harryrobert what are you talking about?

100% ..TV LICENCING IS FRAUD.DO NOT PAY IT, THEY CAN DO NOTHING...IGNORE THEM TOTALY..

Yes my dad was in the Post Office and the Post Office drivers could get afternoon and evening overtime to drive them around route. Seems if people saw a TV detector van sales of TV licences would go up in the area.

Yeah but finding the good yutube channels is a pain in the ass. The KZfaq algorithm is a horrible curator.

@@lakrids-pibe Plus you need a keyboard always at hand to skip ads.

You have a TV - ergo the *ability* to view live TV - need a licence?

@@andidubya3840 A TV doesn't give you the ability to watch TV any more than a computer does. I have no connection to an aerial. My TV is just another computer monitor. I don't watch live TV at all, so I don't need a licence. I fill in the form every few years.

@@althejazzman yes my mistake. I believed some parts of the threatening letters i used to get when I had no TV

Stick it to the MAN... or in this case {the TVvan}

I got round by the clause in the 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act that says that a set "largely or entirely powered by battery" was exempt from the licence fee - I had a black and white set and a car battery (though never actually used it)...when they came around the halls of residence, showed them, quoted it and they agreed I was exempt...

Yes, they really exist. They are called the Plymouth Brethren or the Exclusive Brethren.

@@trevormillar1576 "Plymouth Brethren" could have been a cool name for a car in the US.

Of course not. Once you've knocked on the door and been inside, any other evidence is superseded. But you need justification to knock on the door.

I don't know, but maybe that's because evidence from a detector van on it's own is not admissible in court and needs further evidence to back it up.

Check out ChilliJohnCarne's KZfaq channel. He's an expert on this matter. Please don't believe the shite that the BBC myth machine keep pumping out (via a PR company costing millions per year). youtube.com/@ChilliJonCarne

@@hobbified exactly, previous comment by analoguelnqatar just can't see past his/her nose.

you actually need a warrant to force entry into anyone's home regarding a tv licence. just tell them to FO. they won't have a warrant because they won't have evidence. The only way these goons abtain evidence is if you are stupid enough to let them into your own home. amazed at how brainwashed the people in this country remain @@hobbified

Go on Anthony, bloody 'av 'em

Should have just ignored them from the beginning

You need one to watch KZfaq too actually..

@@WalrusRiderEntertainment Sort of correct, but only if you watch something that is also currently being broadcast as live as it is being produced. If you watch purely non live KZfaq stuff then you do not need a licence. You only need a licence if you are watching something live happening at that moment. If KZfaq has anything broadcasting the coronation of King Charles III next year that is being broadcasted by KZfaq totally live as it happens, then a licence will be required, but if you watch it say one hour after it finishes, then it will not be live and therefore no licence needed.

@@Micke120872 In theory, all it needs is a 1 minute delay.

Oh that old trick? Eat the TV? It's not a TV, it's a toaster!

Vyvyan is too busy getting stuck on his window ledge to eat the TV

When that telly comes out the other end...........

@@theotherwayofstopping4717 It'll be 13 channels of shit.

Very good advice. Unfortunately, people don't follow this and still sign the 178 form

a stranger walking up to your window and looking in, could be considered criminal intent.

NHK in Japan also use the same model.

Under the implied rights of access they get by default, any sight of live tv being viewed through a window would be considered 'fair game' to them. Removing their implied right of access will only increase their suspicions and possibly encourage them apply for a warrant. Keep your curtains closed, and if they do call, say 'no thanks' and close the door.

They existed in the 70’s. My mother tells me she had a photo of me outside our flats and there was a detector van in the background. It might have been the only one in the country though.

@@SINTD_666 you sure that she wasn't teaching you to pay it when you where older, and even if it was there, how do you know it worked, not just a fake spinning thing on top

@@lucian6395 She definitely wasn’t teaching me to pay it. She didn’t have a license herself and she refused to buy one until she got caught without one and went to court in the early 80’s. How do I know it worked? I don’t know if it worked or was fake. But that wasn’t the question. The question was whether they existed or not. I don’t believe they ever worked. Certainly not well enough to get a conviction if that was the only evidence they took to court. Unfortunately the enforcers worked psychologically. If people thought they had been caught by a detector van, they usually admitted what they had done. Not only that, if an enforcer knocked at the door randomly and could see or hear the tv, they had you banged to rights anyway. They could say they were alerted to your address by a detector van if they wanted to but the van would never be used as evidence. Frequently they would use other tactics like peering through front windows or looking and listening through letterboxes. If they looked through a letterbox or a front window or even randomly knocked on the door and were challenged by the homeowner, they would have excuses for all of those things. That’s another detector van tactic. They would say the van picked up a signal and that the enforcer had knocked on the door but there was no answer so they called through the letterbox or went to knock on the window. The detector van (fake or not) was a tool. I’ve just realised how long this message is and I’m probably telling you what you already know. If I am I do apologise.

@@SINTD_666 similar thing with my nan, it's till a psychological thing with her even though she has never been confronted by them, she is afraid of what will happen. (P.s your message wasn't too long)

@@lucian6395 What you’re saying about your nan was definitely part of their long term plan. 20 years ago young people moved out of their parents home, it was one of the things they accepted they had to do because their parents did it. It was always the same things; set up direct debit for rent, council tax, water rates etc. Then get insurance, get a phone number, change address with DVLA, car insurance etc, and then make sure you have a tv license. It was ingrained into them like religion. (No offence meant if you’re religious) I have a tv license although 99% of the time I’m either on Netflix or Now TV movies or KZfaq. My kids like one or two tv shows they watch live so I have to have a license.

The technology has been in use since the late 50s - but I don’t know if the BBC used it. Check out “Rafter”: warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/vigilant/lectures/gchq/rafter/

its quite possible to detect the beam circuitry in a CRT tube set, but whether the BBC would have gone to expense is questionable, especially in the 60s 70s, IMO it was all a bluff

LOL, no. Any radio receiver has a local oscillator, and the LO radiates EM waves at the frequency it's tuned to. Detecting a LO requires...another radio. Pretty simple, and yes it was the military that first used them in WWII to catch spies.

The two things they could zero in on would be the line scan oscillator and the local oscillator in the tuner. The equipment would be a directional aerial and a spectrum analyzer. This would work until the 1980s and would certainly not work today which is why they went for set registration in the 80s. Now its a lost cause.

@@martinusher1 yep, with newer TV front ends in little Faraday cages, going after the baseband video is the low-hanging fruit. A CRT yoke made sounds you could hear across a room, so it should be easy to pick up as RF. Detecting color in the US would require nothing extra, as the frequencies are slightly less. But for PAL, listening for the color subcarrier (with its own LO) might just work. Today, they could compare the spectral balance of light from the TV, and figure out what show it matches, which I'd fear in commercial hands!

Might be pot luck. About six months after I bought my house I received a TV licence demand for my old flat, turned out the new tenant hadn't bought one. I seem to remember I just had to complete a form or compose a letter and return it - never heard anything again.

The threatening letters started arriving at my late fathers address between us registering his death and the funeral, he had been old enough at the time to have had a free license. They really don’t like you using their threatening language back at them!

@@MrRnipperBrockleBroadcasting Indeed! But while I'm a polite, reasonable person (mostly), that tone in a letter really did put my back up!

@@garethreece Yes absolutely.

You're an idiot for getting worked up about these letters. Just ignore them. I don't have a TV, and I constantly get bombarded with letters, I either bin them or return to sender. Over the years, they have reduced their letter frequency to one every 6 months. Never has anyone come by, despite living in a large town. Don't get worked up over these things.

I think it’s simpler than that - the evidence doesn’t exist. Just a very dishonest organisation but that became obvious during the referendum!

I seem to remember hearing about that on Karl Smallwood's YT channel.

That's exactly how some technologies are developed - e.g. weapons systems.

It's called 'compartmentalisation' and is in widespread use in lots of industries that make for example secret defence products.

@@chrisplunkett2814 Correct. However, the BBC have never used any evidence gathered by using these gadgets in a court case. It's just a load of horse shit, designed to scare the elderly and vulnerable.

The UK is moving rapidly in that direction I am afraid. In fact most "western states" are heading this way.

That will be Orwellian then?

My grandfather, now dead, said in the 90’s that the world was moving more and more towards authoritarian rule of one kind or another and he’d seen it change but by bit since the 40’s in various bits of legislation that individually didn’t look much but lined up was significant.

@@xr6lad Hilarious, when you look at how truly authoritarian it was in the 1700s, say. Transported for theft of a loaf of bread? The reality is that it's a hell of a lot more liberal than it used to be, and grinding poverty has diminished.

People who claim every goddamn thing the government does is Orwellian, are themselves Orwellian. Read a new damn book people. Hell, ease into it with Brave New World if ya have to. I've come to the conclusion that the world is only as shitty as you let it be. And it's kinda shitty because every single generation just bitches about changes, and how "it used to be better." No it didn't, you just don't think about the shitty parts of the past. People in America used to (and a smaller number still do) bitch about how not being allowed to call black people the N word is trampling on the constitution. Idk man. "This is so Orwellian" is so goddamned overused and almost all of the time the subject is not actually "Orwellian." Call me up when they start rounding us up in cattle cars, then I might concede some points.

We did that in greece since forever but it is around 50 euros per year nothing like the 200 the bbc wants

Same in Portugal, but it's like 3 euros monthly and state channels still run ads, apart from the 2nd channel, the news channel but only on FTA, and the radio.

The technology aspect is an interesting one. A simple radio device was definitely able to "hear" the local oscillator of a television set or radio. I discovered that as a child playing around with shortwave radio. The problem for the detector van however, was that local oscillator operated at very low frequencies which meant that they would have had to have used omnidirectional antennas with greatly reduced gain. How effective these were at detecting such a weak signal through a double brick wall is debatable but I would suggest that they were somewhat compromised to say the least. Any atmospheric electrical noise or noise generated by unshielded motors and generators would almost certainly have drowned out the local oscillator. If any technology was genuinely employed in these vans to detect TV's, it would have been a horrible job to operate it. I don't know many people that would spend eight hours a day listening to static and lightening crash's for very long, do you?

From what I heard in another country than UK, they did for some time work but only if you lived in a single household house. Not in a multi-apartment house like the one in their warning commercials. 99.99% of the work were made just ringing doorbell at or phoning up people that did not pay license and ask. Lived for quite some time without TV and was phoned from time to time, sometimes quite rode. Offered them to visit my house and see if they could find a TV and if not just stop bugging me, but they never accepted. Later license was moved to ordinary tax in my country and no one get bugged anymore. Probably a much more efficient system.

@@pjohan74 I would hazard a guess that in times past it was possible to detect a radio appliance in areas with low density housing. I'm not so sure about it when you're talking about medium and high density housing. Directional antennas that could operate on such low frequencies are the stuff of science fiction.

@@davidbrayshaw3529 Imagine how they work now with Home Plug AV kits sending Ethernet over the electrical wiring. There's noise enough to make the radio hams complain, so it probably disrupts TV detector vans.

@@richardcrossley5581 They wouldn't stand a snowball's chance these days. I live in a smallish town in Australia in a location where you wouldn't expect much noise. When I've had the radio gear up and running on HF I get noise of around S3-s5. My mate lives closer to the center of town in a duel zone (business/residential) area and he's given up on HF at home due to a constant noise level of S9, all man made. There is no way that a TV detector van could work in my environment let alone the hustle and bustle of a medium density city. Don't even get me started on solar and poorly shielded inverters.

It's good(ish) to know that other countries have this terrible idea

Also from Denmark. We now have a media licence. If you own a tv, a smartphone or computer you have access and therefor have to pay this media licence. Btw I had a visit from the detection van a long time ago. So they did exist.

@@albo1506 they likely simply used the data collected to find obvious users who didn't pay. If you need a license to use pretty much any means of Internet connection (like everyone who isn't part of an older demographic), you more than likely have an Internet subscription yet don't pay a license, it's pretty safe to assume that you are violating the norm. Now park the fancy van they claim can detect infractors outside your house, ring your doorbell and say they've "detected" usage of a TV or whatever yet you don't have a license... Either you scare away and admit the infraction, or they'll have to prosecute you using... the "data" of the fake van? Nah, more like your Internet/electricity consumptions data which is meant to be private... I guess you can see where we're going.

In merica you'll find a red dot on your forehead.

You forgot to mention the cat detector vans for the cat licenses…

Its true but what can we expect in a such a uniformized country where all the houses look the same, and you can't stick out of the mass in any ways?

I was about to post about this - you are correct - I've been informed from several reliable sources the same, it was a psychological tool and reality they just drove to houses with no licenses and looked for tell tale aerials or flickering lights.

Aerial , little mermaid has nothing to do with the bbc

@@Wok_Agenda Not true! its the name of the in-house BBC magazine!

@@Wok_Agenda If you want to see some real nitpicking, get an engineer and a biologist together and ask the plural for 'antenna.'

Not seen you for a while. Must search for your latest...

Hi - my dad told me he got caught out 1961-1965 some where there, but by 1970 there were no more license fees in Australia

@@georgemaragos2378 I think it was some time in the early 70s. I didn't even know about the license when I was growing up

Thats because the aussies wouldn't pay so abc gave up in tbe end

@@chubbyroyston3880 as a bunch of desendants of convicts I can see why not. G00D F0R THEM.

#DefundtheBBC

Some of the US Government's money goes to PBS, whether you watch it or not.

@@LittleCar if you've gone to a school in the United States, I can almost guarantee that you've seen PBS produced materials. I know my children have used books from their school library that are PBS co-produced. PBS has a long reach and is usually viewed in a positive light. Just my observations, though. :)

I think the same is probably true of the BBC. I certainly remember watching a lot of Blackadder in history classes 😁

What if you don't use medical services for a year? Or don't need the fire service or the police? In a grown up, caring society we often pay for things we don't necessarily use.

@@Mithrasboy You might need medical service eventually, nobody knows. You might need fire service, you cant say never. But i will definitely never watch bbc channel. Thats a difference.

Indeed, TV sets used to be huge things, with little or no internal RF shielding so the set's own "spurious emissions" may have been detectable with the right equipment. These days a small aluminium pressing is enough to fully shield the small PCBs in a TV. Incidentally, the level of these emissions is governed by law & is very low, otherwise the whole RF spectrum would be blanketed by interference from electronic devices. This is the reason that "WiFi Boosters" are illegal in UK - They take your WiFi signal & re-transmit it at an increased amplitude that might drown out your neighbour's WiFi & make their's unusable. Likewise why you can't buy routers with monstrously powerful WiFi signals.

Ah but the difference is you are paying directly for the content you want, and not for that superfluous stuff you don't :D

Nobody here will literally remember, but some could have a very old relative who does.

@@BilisNegra I remember having a radio license, they weren't abolished till 1971.

@@ageinghippy100 They were abolished because people stopped bothering to buy one, I am surprised the TV licence still hangs on, but seriously it will not be around for ever and neither will the BBC the way things are going.

And dummies in the vans

They had detection Cars as early as 1952, look it up

'Fraid not!

Hello miss!

I would like to buy a license for me pet fish, Eric.

Musta been before they installed a CATalitic converter on them.😁

that;;s no advertisments. It's so surprised that country is better livng quality than country I live, and than Lebanon.

They would probably have to stop broadcasting BBC TV and radio as they couldn’t pay any of the staff!

The majority of prosecutions come from doorstep confessions. The bbc goons scare you into signing a 178 form which you basically admit to watching live tv without a licence. Warrants are extremely rare. So, don't sign anything

The irony is not every single domestic electricity bill is used for a home with a TV. Sometimes it's just some land and you hooked up electricity to run the appliances. Bam. Your crops are paying 3€ monthly. Same for vacation homes that you only go there for 2 weeks a year. Consumption = 0€, fees includling broadcast fee= 15€

@@miaugato93 oh yeah, its full of holes. If you have a holiday home, youre paying it twice. Its a relevant example seeing that Portugal has the highest holiday home ownership rate in Europe. Not only that, theres now a new (starting in 2022) 2€/year fee that every cable package and video streaming provider has to pay for each subscriber they have in the country, also for the public broadcaster. Any individual now, besides the direct fee in the monthly electricity bill, is also indirectly paying a fee in the cable/internet bill, plus for each video streaming service it subscribes to. Still, were quite a ways off from the kind of stuff that exists in the UK, with TV licensing ;)

So it's basically "our way" or Norway.

The BBC is a much bigger organisation than the ABC with a huge amount of output. There is no comparison.

Detecting the tuner might not be be practical but detecting the stuff that's driving the CRT display isn't hard.

Not the UK, but we had the same system in my country, and I have been told by at least one telecom/broadcast-distribution guru that participated innthis they could indeed do this with ease back in the day when TV sets were overpowered, few and far between. Resonance in the reciever and the crazy picture tubes back then was more than enough. People feared them as hell as they were percieved as a direct continuation of the cars the Gestapo used to triangulate illegal radios during wwii occupation times. At some point it got easier to just ring the bells on fridays and saturday evenings of adresses that didn’t have a TV on paper and listen for them when someone opened, but the Vans and sinilar handheld devices where used in infomercials for quite some time!

It is possible if the set has a poorly designed tuner that leaks local oscillator radiation. In fact it's possible to tell what channel the set is tuned to if the IF is known. The way around that is to use a TRF front end, and for good measure, an electrostatic picture tube to avoid electromagnetic radiation from the line output transformer and deflection yoke.

What do you mean by it becoming more politicised?

Interesting point. If you fund it through taxes then the politicians might be able to influence what is produced by influencing what is funded. Interestingly, despite its remit of non bias (or because of it, depending on your viewpoint) the new director general of the BBC has supposedly cut back on comedy funding - the suggestion being this is as he allegedly strongly supports the government while the comedians generally do the opposite. You might see that as reducing the bias against the government or increasing the bias towards them, depending on your viewpoint!

@@fgsaramago Kind of what Dean says. If politicians can open or close the tap with money, they can tell what is ok to show on TV and what is not. Public TV isn't, and probably never have been, unbiased but I still think it's a dangerous road to go and let politicians run the game of information.

@@PiperLund if there's a specific tax to fund it, isn't the effect the opposite? With that guaranteed source of funds, not much influence politicians can have

@@fgsaramago It is a specific tax, but the government decides the budget for the public network every year. Since they decide the budget they can also give clear directions for example what to report on, what narrative that should be run and who gets to be in the center of attention. I'm not saying that it automatically becomes corrupt or politicized but I would say there is definitely a possibility.

If you look at it another way, the licence fee is a means of funding high quality public broadcasting without forcing everyone to pay in their taxes or subjecting them to commercial advertising. You'd be amazed how much more enjoyable TV is without ads although there's less chances to get up and make a cup of tea! If you look at it as something you either opt to help fund or opt out of, it's not a bad idea. And from that point of view, if you're enjoying what other people are paying to fund for free, well it might seem a little bit like pinching some of what they've paid for!

I shake my head in disbelief at TV news and children's programs surrounded by commercials. Public service television is great. At least where I live.

@@lakrids-pibe Most children's shows are on PBS in the USA which is funded by donations and doesn't contain commercials. Which kids shows have commercials?

National broadcasting is greatly funded and of such high quality in the US I guess you don't have to worry.... oh wait.

@@applausenu Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the USA is greatly funded and has high quality programing. I've lived in the UK for a few years and agree that television programming there is of high quality. My "disbelief" was towards the way TV taxes are separately imposed, instead of having them incorporated into the price of televisions and accessories. But I get it, we ALL pay for television services regardless of which side of the ocean we live. The UK has a system that works for the UK, and the US system works for the US.

Actually no, the BBC only advertised BBC products and services, but the non BBC terrestrial channels did use adverts

@@joannaatkins822 We have a similar situation here in Denmark where the State-owned Danmarks Radio is not allowed to transmit advertising. Other TV and Radio stations do broadcast commercials, however.

Yes but we got rid of it

Me too. The licence was paid by buying postage stamps and sticking them on a card. When the card was full it could be redeemed back at the post office as payment for the licence. PMG in those days.

Because Brits don't like paying for public services

beetooex Or, may be it's because many of us don't like funding government fear mongering BS propaganda!

@@chrisrebar2381 Enjoy your little culture war. It's nice for people to have a hobby.

beetooex Sort of proves my point!

A properly operating CRT does not create any radiation. Certainly nothing that would be easily detectable _by a f***ing antenna_ yards away, through walls and brick. (or the metal panels of a ship. military and government tends to get excessively paranoid around SIGINT.)

Dont forget the threat of getting a snail put on your eye.

In uk better as we can watch and own at tv just not watch live broadcasts or bbc iPlayer, so they have to prove u are doing either of those things, owning tv or devices care perfectly legal