TV licensing threats

Kayak10

Linda_D wrote: »

Are there really people still paying for a TV licence to one of the most corrupt and abusive companies in the world?:eek::eek:

They should be ashamed of themselves.

I'm proud to say I've never paid for a TV licence in my life.

I guess you never watch live tv or recorded May be you just don't have a TV
If do you have been very lucky
I again am talking from experience AND a court visit I think the fine was around £150 Plus I had to get a license :-(

Cornucopia

Kayak10 wrote: »

May I politely suggest you read above I have already put what and how they detect and contrary to someone else's post the info was NOT on a TVL forum it was on the Actual TVL web site and if you are right I suggest I was unlucky NOT lucky

I want them to catch evaders. Perhaps I should have made that clearer?

If you were evading, and they "got you good", good luck to them.

Whether it was done using an actual detector, a pretend detector, or some other way is only really of academic interest for me.

Linda_D_2

Kayak10 wrote: »

I guess you never watch live tv or recorded May be you just don't have a TV
If do you have been very lucky
I again am talking from experience AND a court visit I think the fine was around £150 Plus I had to get a license :-(

I always watch live TV.

You were just too stupid and let them in.

Kayak10

Linda_D wrote: »

I always watch live TV.

You were just too stupid and let them in.

When I went to court I did NOT let them in they just followed a progressive set of letters then took me to court
Good luck if you get away with it as I believe in paying for value and I certainly don't think the BBC gives value Especially as my son pointed out they Own or part own the company that brings us Dave tv amount others so it's double standards they say they don't show paid adverts when in fact they do Just not on BBC

Kayak10

Cornucopia wrote: »

I want them to catch evaders. Perhaps I should have made that clearer?

If you were evading, and they "got you good", good luck to them.

Whether it was done using an actual detector, a pretend detector, or some other way is only really of academic interest for me.

I have no problem paying as I am now I went through a period when it was literally a case of eating and heating or tv license
And to reiterate I worked for 43 years without claiming a penny It's not funny being told your to old at 58 as I was when I lost everything in the main no fault of my own :-(

DevCoder

Interesting technical discussion on digitalspy

A superheterodyne receiver - and most TV receivers, whether terrestrial, satellite, or cable, are superhet - works by generating a frequency close to the frequency you're trying to tune into. When you multiply (also called 'mix') this frequency with the signal coming from the aerial/dish/cable, the original signal is shifted down by the local oscillator frequency.

By changing the local oscillator frequency, you can control how much the received signal ends up being shifted by. The aim is to get the desired channel to the frequency that the filters and decoding equipment work on (the 'intermediate frequency' or IF). For UK terrestrial and cable TV receivers this is usually 38.9 MHz. To tune into UHF channel 21, which has a centre frequency of 474 MHz, you set the local oscillator to 435.1 MHz. To tune into UHF channel 60, 786 MHz, you set the local oscillator to 747.1 MHz.

Satellite TV has two stages of conversion: one in the LNB to shift down from 10-12 GHz to 900-1200 MHz (two different local oscillator frequencies, selected by signals sent up the cable from the box to the dish), and a second one in the receiver from 900-1200 to 70 MHz. The IF is higher for satellite TV as each channel is wider, 26 or 33 MHz compared to the 8 MHz used in terrestrial and cable. The frequency range from the dish to the box is deliberately selected to be higher than the terrestrial TV range, so it can be combined with terrestrial signals on the same cable.

Although the local oscillator power is quite low, the design of the receiver means that it gets sent back up the aerial or cable, where it leaks. The terrestrial TV frequencies used in a given area were deliberately spaced out so that the local oscillator frequency used by one TV would not interfere with the signals used for a different channel that their neighbour would be watching. This is why the PSB channel spacing is still usually 3 or 4 UHF channels apart (e.g. Crystal Palace uses 23, 26, 30 for the PSB multiplexes and 22, 25, 28 for the COM multiplexes).

All TV Licensing have to do is use directional aerials and look for devices essentially broadcasting on one of the local oscillator frequencies likely to be in use in the area.

Regulations on electromagnetic field emissions have substantially reduced the power of local oscillator broadcast, but it's still there if you have a sensitive enough receiver. Indeed, the weaker it is, the easier I would expect it to be to work out where it's coming from.

You can also have 'direct conversion' receivers. This still has a local oscillator, but it's tuned to the wanted transmission's centre frequency rather than offset.

Direct sampling of the signal, with no downconversion to either intermediate frequency or baseband, is possible for lower frequencies, but as I understand it you have to sample at twice the broadcast frequency, and I'm not aware of any analogue-to-digital converters that can sample quickly enough for the UHF TV band. Even if it could, it would produce a datastream measured in gigabytes per second and the decoding stages would struggle with that! It would be far, far more expensive than a superhet or direct conversion receiver.

All that said: you need a relatively skilled person on the ground to operate detector apparatus. It's a lot cheaper, now, to assume that every address in the country should have a TV licence, and compare your database of TV licences with Royal Mail's Postcode Address File and addresses reported by TV dealers to find the places that are likely to have a TV but no licence. I once ran into a problem where the address that my credit card was registered to didn't exactly match what was on PAF, so my TV licence didn't match the address that the TV dealer had given to TV Licensing. It wasn't possible to correct it on their website because it validates what you enter against PAF. (It was a house that had been converted into two flats sharing one front door; Royal Mail would not create two addresses on PAF because there was only one letter box.)

Source: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1920698&page=3

nobbysn*ts

krisdorey wrote: »

Interesting technical discussion on digitalspy



Source: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1920698&page=3

The good old days of analogue tv and crathode ray tubes. Indeed, that was how the old detector van used to work. Now, it's all digital, with lcd screens though. Your tv emits the same 'noise' as your laptop.

DevCoder

I think the cathode ray tube detection method was van eck phreaking wasnt it? Its been a long time since I dabbled in that kind of stuff.

Van eck phreaking is rendered useless by the low output of modern day sets of course.

Cornucopia

Kayak10 wrote: »

When I went to court I did NOT let them in they just followed a progressive set of letters then took me to court

So what evidence did they present against you? You say you did not let them in - does that mean that they interviewed you on the doorstep?

noh

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2445153/Are-TV-detector-vans-just-cunning-trick-For-decades-claimed-trap-licence-cheats-In-fact-theyve-led-single-prosecution.html