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 ...
That is why, at least the last time I was there, they often drink Bud in the lessor pubs. I kid you not. Bud was cheaper than the home beer..except they call it lager there.
I forget what I drank there now, I think it was tenents-or something like that. But it caused the proper effect after a few pints.
“The Looney Detector Van, you mean....”
IT’S PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHAT CAUSE UNREST IN THIS WORLD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Detection_technology
The Detector Vans are still somewhat of a mystery.
LOL
Unless the TV was hooked up to a cable, how in the world could they tell if you have a TV? A TV only receives signals and does not transmit them.
That’s not so. There is leakage from various circuits that means you are a short-range transmitter of various signals.
It’s a tax. Color tv tax cost more.
Rats! Foiled again!
My Dad’s father was a Dodge and VW owner. 1967 Dart. It got up to about 165K on it, still looking new and running great, but he figured he’d get a new one and “save” on replacing a bunch of stuff like shocks, brakes, etc...
Enter the 1976 Dodge Aspen... The Enemy of Grandad. After 26 times in the shop in ~ the first 6 months he actually got the dealer to give him his money back.
Ended up buying 2 VW Rabbits, the “Champagne Edition” gasoline one, and a diesel one. That dealer actually offered to pay him more than he paid for them about a year later when the second gas crunch hit (he kept them).
One more - LoL. ... kidding
Got the first color tv in 1968.
“I got my first TV at age 12 in 1988 and it was black and white.”
I don’t know anyone that didn’t have a color TV by the mid 60s.
Back in 1966, my parents' black & white TV's picture tube gave up the ghost and Dad bought a Zenith color set (with "Space Command" remote) to replace it. I know it was November of that year, because after pointing the "clicker", pushing the power button and waiting for the TV to warm up, the very first thing I ever saw on TV in color was this:
I remember Dad being very irate for a moment, thinking that the TV installer had screwed up the hue adjustment. :-)
Ah, the NTSC (some cynics branded it Never Twice the Same Color) system. In that vintage, there wasn’t any sort of color tracking system, except you the viewer. You got whatever hue the station you were receiving had set up. So the Hue dial was on the front panel. In subsequent years various TV designs mucked with the system either to change the color demodulation angle or to adjust its relative hue based on the overall contents of the picture. I remember hacking some tube-type Magnavox circuitry where the color demodulation angle was designed so out of kilter (in the interest of pulling anything vaguely like a flesh tone into a flesh tone) that greens would not appear in the picture and the customer was irate that it couldn’t seem to be fixed. He wanted to see the green trees, the green fields. A change in a capacitor value cured that problem.
Back during Star Treks original run in the late 60s I would stay up Friday’ watching it after my parents went to bed.
They had black and white then.
MeTV is replaying Star Trek on Saturdays 9pm EST and I cant sit through most episodes. I seen it in tooo many reruns in my teens.
Yes in the UK you need to pay a tv license fee..its a tax for the being able to watch the “free” over the air BBC..in some ways in how we have satellite tv but from the goverment
When I first moved to Japan, I didn’t have a TV. The TV tax man stopped by and couldn’t believe that I didn’t have one. I let him in to look around, and he left. This happened for several years, and he eventually stopped coming.
That’s when I got a TV.
When my dad was stationed in England in the 1960s they still had the radio license fee which dated all the way back to the beginning of the BBC in the 1920s. I know we paid the TV tax but I don’t think we paid for a radio.
So far as I know they did not tax portable or auto radios, just AC powered ones.
One time he came over to watch The Incredible Hulk.
He had no idea that the Hulk was green.
O/T, but remember when color TV's had all kinds of knobs to adjust the color levels?
My sis and I would fiddle around with the knobs until we thought the color was "perfect".
My dad would come home and within 10 seconds would start yelling "Who's been messing with the TV?".
Mumble grumble...and he'd tune it just how he liked it.
OK, now it makes sense.
They don’t actually have a B&W TV, but they say they do. In order to pay less tax. That makes perfectly good sense.
UK government is insane.
I never saw a color TV until I was eight years old. My siblings and I couldn't take our eyes off it. That was about 1961. Our family didn't own one ourselves until about the mid seventies.
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