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they seriously have vans that drive around scanning to see if you're watching television on a physical TV There's been some debate about whether these vans tru
by omh 14y ago
they seriously have vans that drive around scanning to see if you're watching television on a physical TV
There's been some debate about whether these vans truly did any "detection". It may actually have been an elaborate bluff.
Most of their efforts, especially recently, are just pestering every UK address which doesn't have a license (relatively few nowadays).
- mseebach 14y agoIn the early days, when TVs were badly shielded and (more importantly) few and far between, and where radio transmitters were rare, it's plausible that simply listening for electromagnetic noise would yield usable results. Today, to believe that a machine exists (in secrecy, no less) that can detect from a considerable distance, through walls, if someone is watching live TV (watching non-live TV without a license is legal) on iPlayer on their computer in a setting overflowing with all sorts of legitimate electromagnetic radiation is, frankly, laughable.