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I'd be willing to wager that the detection techniques said to be used in the vans are a product of mendacious fantasy (some might say that is par for the course

I'd be willing to wager that the detection techniques said to be used in the vans are a product of mendacious fantasy (some might say that is par for the course with the BBC), and the actual method used is to simply correlate homes that do not have licences with those that previously had them, and to simply look towards the roof and see if an aerial is present. Ockham's razor and all that.

bloak 5y ago
Analogue CRT television sets emitted some distinctive signals, I think, like the horizontal scan rate of about 15 kHz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_scan_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_scan_rate That's hardly relevant today, of course.
- ivanhoe 5y ago
  True, but it's low power signal and it's not an easy job to triangulate on that in say a 12-storey building, 8 apartments per floor, and where everyone has TVs emitting on the same frequency. It makes very questionable the legality of entering someone home based just on that.
  - UncleSlacky 5y ago
    They're not legally allowed to enter your home without your consent, anyway.
    - brigandish 5y ago
      Legally that may be the case but it seems - if the videos on the Crimebodge channel[1] are anything to go by - that they are forcing their way in, often with the help of the police. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUSL8poMxM_uXWzWExJaY-w https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUSL8poMxM_uXWzWExJaY-w Edit: It appears that large chunks of Crimebodge's channel is private now because Youtube were threatening to delete his channel (or something, I'm not clear as to what's happened since the last time I looked) but those BBC licence fee vids don't seem to be up. I hope he gets things sorted, sorry to have wasted anyone's time with that link.
ivanhoe 5y ago
In reality it was mostly just a stunt to scare people into paying the fees. In 90s a number of countries in Europe had tried the similar actions, I remember in Serbia the national tv station RTS was advertising continuously how their technicians are walking the city with "Swedish detectors", which were some mysterious boxes, probably some kind of EM detectors, that supposedly could detect TV devices inside the homes - but of course the whole thing was a load of crap as it's a way too much work to make it profitable, so it was mainly used just to scare the senior population into paying them. Later they simply changed the laws to make it mandatory for every household to pay the TV tax, as their detectors obviously didn't work.
deleted 5y ago
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monadgonad 5y ago
Approximately every house has an aerial, its presence is not a good indicator of if there’s a TV hooked up to it. I think most likely they just look through your window.

bloak 5y ago

Analogue CRT television sets emitted some distinctive signals, I think, like the horizontal scan rate of about 15 kHz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_scan_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_scan_rate That's hardly relevant today, of course.

ivanhoe 5y ago
True, but it's low power signal and it's not an easy job to triangulate on that in say a 12-storey building, 8 apartments per floor, and where everyone has TVs emitting on the same frequency. It makes very questionable the legality of entering someone home based just on that.
- UncleSlacky 5y ago
  They're not legally allowed to enter your home without your consent, anyway.
  - brigandish 5y ago
    Legally that may be the case but it seems - if the videos on the Crimebodge channel[1] are anything to go by - that they are forcing their way in, often with the help of the police. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUSL8poMxM_uXWzWExJaY-w https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUSL8poMxM_uXWzWExJaY-w Edit: It appears that large chunks of Crimebodge's channel is private now because Youtube were threatening to delete his channel (or something, I'm not clear as to what's happened since the last time I looked) but those BBC licence fee vids don't seem to be up. I hope he gets things sorted, sorry to have wasted anyone's time with that link.

ivanhoe 5y ago

In reality it was mostly just a stunt to scare people into paying the fees. In 90s a number of countries in Europe had tried the similar actions, I remember in Serbia the national tv station RTS was advertising continuously how their technicians are walking the city with "Swedish detectors", which were some mysterious boxes, probably some kind of EM detectors, that supposedly could detect TV devices inside the homes - but of course the whole thing was a load of crap as it's a way too much work to make it profitable, so it was mainly used just to scare the senior population into paying them. Later they simply changed the laws to make it mandatory for every household to pay the TV tax, as their detectors obviously didn't work.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

monadgonad 5y ago

Approximately every house has an aerial, its presence is not a good indicator of if there’s a TV hooked up to it. I think most likely they just look through your window.