Posted on 01/05/2014 6:38:42 PM PST by Olog-hai
They are generally regarded as historic relics and part of a bygone era of broadcasting history. But even in today’s digital age, there are 11,550 households in the country still watching black and white television, official figures reveal.
The number of black and white licenses have dropped dramatically in recent years and the total has decreased by a further 12 percent over the past year. […]
The cost of a black and white TV license remains frozen at £49 ($80.37) until the BBC Charter Review in 2016. A color license costs £145.50 ($238.65). …
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Tell me about it. I lived there for a year in the late eighties. The cost of living was about 1/3 more than it cost me to live in Los Angeles.
Lots of working class folks couldn't afford to upgrade to color TV until the mid seventies. My family was one of them.
Not a fairy tale.
LO leakage from the TV can be received from outside the home. The LO leakage frequency indicates what channel the TV is tuned to. It would get difficult identifying the specific room in high density housing but hey, they don’t need a warrant and can go door to door to investigate...
Adjust the vertical for a rolling picture...
Fixed TV’s when I was a kid...
It's been going on ever since it was introduced by the Conservative government in 1922 - originally for radio, and the same system subsequently transferred to TV.
At the time of its introduction, it didn't seem strange at all. Some means had to be found to fund the new medium's infrastructure, and advertising wasn't considered. The obvious model was the then still new medium of the telephone. You paid an annual fee to the General Post Office to rent a phone line. It seemed logical to charge a similar fee to rent the 'wireless' connection to a radio.
Despite the huge technical, cultural and economic changes in broadcasting since that time, regular reviews of the system have failed to come up with an alternative which doesn't seem to have just as many disadvantages: so the conclusion has always been, to misquote Churchill, 'it's the worst system for funding a public broadcasting service except all the others.'
The separate radio licence was abolished in the 1970s.
License? What is this about a license? You have to PAY A LICENSE in the UK just to watch TV?!
they call it roku
License = tax,probably obligatory except for free passes issued to privileged chosen ones . Government run TV just like Hitlers ministry.
It’s not a license, it’s a TAX.
>> they had vans that would detect if someone had a TV in their home.
Monty Python’s sketch —a man says he has a license for his pet cat and is told at the post office he doesn’t need one.
Cleese: The man from the cat detector van.
Palin: Looney detector van, you mean.
Cleese: It’s people like you what causes unrest...I never seen so many aerials in my life. The man told me their equipment could pinpoint a purr at 400 yards.
And Eric, being such a happy cat, was a piece of cake.
Indeed had heard of radio-TV licenses in UK before. (Michael Palin, in one Monty Python moment: “And they want to put the license fee UP?”
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/
“Pay for your TV licence in a way that’s convenient to you.
Yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly...A TV licence costs 145.50 pounds.”
That’s a mere $238 US.
Hell, we got cable TV in 1976 when it first came through. Dad didnt want to pay for us to go out to see movies anymore,
That’s correct. What’s more you have to have a license for each TV. The government has vans equipped with electronic sensors that can determine where each TV is at. This info is compared with licenses issued to determine if a residence has an unlicensed TV. At one time you needed to have a separate license for each radio but that was dropped some years ago.
Intercepting cable TV was pretty easy until cable went digital ~ mid 2000s.
There was a whole industry around receiver-converters that did that, and many premium channels could be unblocked with simple passive notch filters.(I knew people who did that)
Similar limits with wireless phones.
But those days are over,
“License” a black and white television, but watch a color monitor.
The Obamavoters would RIOT if there was a tax on tee vee viewing/ownership.
Funny there’s no reaction over the same thing with Obamacare. But then again, the low-info types reckon they’ve got it made with Medicaid . . .
Just out of curiosity, what was the purpose of a test pattern?
Holy moly. You need a license for a TV?
Right you are and thanks for the correction. Damn, it has been a few years since we had those old black and whites huh?!
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