The BBC Claims To Have TV Detecting Super-Vans | Just the Facts 

Which is strange, since it's not like it is a requirement for anyone to actually have a TV licence. It is only required if you tune into BBC Broadcasts or use BBC iplayer. If you watch TV in any other capacity, or use streaming devices that aren't iPlayer, then you do not need a licence.

@@QBAlchemist yea that's where logic fails for most people. Pretty much EVERY OTHER CHANNEL has PAID ADVERTISEMENTS. And dispite the BBC claiming to be 'Ad free' they still somehow manage to 'advertise' the shows on BBC1.

If the terms for what is "a device capable of receiving TV signals" is as vague in the UK as it was in Sweden before they tacked this fee onto our taxes, a regular electric oven would qualify, same with a radio, and these days they could claim that since the programming is available online, anyone with a computer or cellphone should pay. If they don't, they are more stupid than I thought.

nah they don't have the right to uh. look through people's windows maliciously like that i think. that's what it was last time i checked.

​@@ReddotzebraThis is the issue with it. Detector technology does exist, it is well documented, in WW2 for example the BBC TV signal was switched off so as not to allow the Germans to lock onto the signal for the purpose of finding BBC /central London with bombing raids. Another example is during the Cold War where the Soviets would drive around with KGB detector vans doing Radio Direction Finding to try and locate where a spy might be broadcasting their signal from (it was done with multiple vans "triangulating" the position) and this method was how Eli Cohen was caught spying for Mossad in Syria. However it's usefulness in determining whether TV is being watched is limited, it detects any signals, such as microwaves within the house, now back in the 80s the idea of running your microwave for an hour was implausible, however now MOBILE PHONES run on the same signal, sending and receiving, so much so that constant operation isn't indicative of a TV set being watched illegally, furthermore my Internet router is now 5G capable, meaning it is in 24/7 operation and would cover a TV being used (if I had one, fuck off BBC) anyway. Now whether they have been used is a different matter, they most likely were used by the BBC until the early 2000s as a reliable means of detecting who may be using the TV without a licence, and further covert methods of evidence gathering (taking a photo of them doing so through their window) were probably what was actually presented in Court. These days I think it is so useless as a means of identification though that it would be too expensive to bother with, they'd be better off spending the money on paying more people to just visit addresses that don't have licences and try to catch people in the act. For what it is worth I've had years of threatening letters about visits and never actually had one, when I first moved here I went online to tell the BBC I don't have a TV, but the website simply said "provide all these details to tell us you don't have a TV and we'll send an inspector around" so the result is the same, whether you tell them or don't they'll "send an inspector around" so I thought fuck it I'm not wasting my time filling a form in for them if they're going to send one anyway, but now they never have. It will likely become a tax in the UK in the next few years, the number of young people paying voluntarily is falling and the number of people refusing to pay is increasing. It's only a matter of time before it becomes a tax on everyone regardless of usership sadly.

@@esmeecampbell7396 You are wrong about the tech being available to do this. What you are talking about is BROADCASTING a signal, which is trivial to trace. It's impossible to say who is receiving that signal though, even if TV did give off a unique bandwidth, as they could be doing anything with a TV that does not include watching the BBC

This will likely happen in the UK now, because less people are paying. It'll just become a tax instead of a licence only for people who want the service.

Sounds like an urban myth. There are numerous other reasons why somebody might have owned a CRT TV even back in the day.

What they watched was the glow, with analogue TV all TVs were on sync With digital there's a processing delay.

I'm an ex-Tv engineer...yes the old crt TV's used to run on a line scan frequency of 16.625khz...which could be picked up via RF receiver but modern TV's are digital and if they tried to intercept your signals it would be a form of 'hacking'...so illegal nowadays

@@no_nameyouknow I doubt that it was used even then, but in principle, those things usually are payments for owning the TV, not watching the national TV. For example in Poland, you just have to pay it if you have cable TV or even if you don't own antena and use it as a big computer screen. Just the ability to receive the signal is enough. Of course the situation is similar as with UK, the official post service is tasked with collecting the fee, but the postman cannot barge into your home and check if you have TV (although there are rumours that they saw TV through the door when they were talking with occupant and they reported that someone owned TV, but not sure if it is true or not).

​@@no_nameyouknowDetector technology does exist, it is well documented, in WW2 for example the BBC TV signal was switched off so as not to allow the Germans to lock onto the signal for the purpose of finding BBC /central London with bombing raids. Another example is during the Cold War where the Soviets would drive around with KGB detector vans doing Radio Direction Finding to try and locate where a spy might be broadcasting their signal from (it was done with multiple vans "triangulating" the position) and this method was how Eli Cohen was caught spying for Mossad in Syria. However it's usefulness in determining whether TV is being watched is limited, it detects any signals, such as microwaves within the house, now back in the 80s the idea of running your microwave for an hour was implausible, however now MOBILE PHONES run on the same signal, sending and receiving, so much so that constant operation isn't indicative of a TV set being watched illegally, furthermore my Internet router is now 5G capable, meaning it is in 24/7 operation and would cover a TV being used (if I had one, fuck off BBC) anyway. Now whether they have been used is a different matter, they most likely were used by the BBC until the early 2000s as a reliable means of detecting who may be using the TV without a licence, and further covert methods of evidence gathering (taking a photo of them doing so through their window) were probably what was actually presented in Court. These days I think it is so useless as a means of identification though that it would be too expensive to bother with, they'd be better off spending the money on paying more people to just visit addresses that don't have licences and try to catch people in the act. For what it is worth I've had years of threatening letters about visits and never actually had one, when I first moved here I went online to tell the BBC I don't have a TV, but the website simply said "provide all these details to tell us you don't have a TV and we'll send an inspector around" so the result is the same, whether you tell them or don't they'll "send an inspector around" so I thought fuck it I'm not wasting my time filling a form in for them if they're going to send one anyway, but now they never have. It will likely become a tax in the UK in the next few years, the number of young people paying voluntarily is falling and the number of people refusing to pay is increasing. It's only a matter of time before it becomes a tax on everyone regardless of usership sadly.

You can detect the local oscillator in a receiver. But in modern circuits spurious transmissions are significantly reduced.

It was detecting microwaves that used to be given off by the sets and emission through the aerial that would be leaking out slightly. No aerial, no emissions, you'd not come up. Even then it was only used to identify POTENTIALLY rule breaking people, for further physical proof. Like imagine a big nose on top of a fire engine, driving around and sniffing for smoke... Yes there are lots of reasons why someone may have some smoke somewhere and not need the Fire brigade but it would be indicative of a real fire that did require attention sometimes.

​@@esmeecampbell7396 What "microwaves"? There's no such thing in a TV receiver, apart from possibly the harmonics from the first Local Oscillator which would be many tens of dB below the LO signal. The detector vans DID detect the signal from the LO because of poor screening and filtering in the front-end of the tuner which was sent straight up to the aerial and radiated. Have a look at how a Superheterodyne receiver works and you'll see how they could tell what you were watching and with simple direction-finding and triangulation could find the TV receiver with reasonable accuracy 😁

@@125brat I thought that was microwaves coming off the aerial. Point stands detection vans exist however it was never accurate enough to prove which exact house, or indeed these days whether the TV is being used legally for non BBC such as running a games console or if it is illegally watching Channel 4, etc. That's why they've abandoned the vans as a whole and just rely on the letters campaign and visiting addresses that haven't got licences.

don’t be so daft. they hardly ever turn up. if you get a visit, you should think your self lucky. I was really scared at the prospect of them coming, now I just laugh at these letters because they never turn up. It’s all bs.

Sorry, that would have been someone like me (Many years ago), posting letters for minimum wage. There was no detection involved, we just had a list of addresses that didn't have a TV licence... Hi-tech eh? 😉

@@dahn57 You need not apologise. It was not your fault that this system existed. For you it was a job to earn money and exist most likely. It's great having insider knowledge of big companies/businesses, and knowing how much BS they tout about their services etc.

@@QBAlchemist Basically, yeah. Working for an agency, before it became the whole zero hours plague that it is today, was always a nightmare. They'd pay the lowest they could, while taking at least double your wage for themselves. Companies only do that to prevent themselves having to pay wages and benefits like sick pay etc properly. It would only really be poor and student types who used to work those jobs back then (Late 90's)

I thought these letters were computer generated. so they employ a spod team in every uk city to put these threat letters in everyones letter boxes? well, I would think that would actually cost the BBC more money than it’s worth. honestly. what a waste of money and time. and what a borring job. putting threatening letters threw peoples doors.

@@chrismills2012 VERY boring, wandering the streets posting letters every day. Plus, when you finish work each day, you'd get given a stack of letters and envelopes, and you would have to put each letter in an envelope ready for the next day, which would usually be an hour or two's unpaid work. And worse than that, I worked through an agency, which meant that I was paid just above minimum wage, but the agency got around twice that much for the hours I worked! There were usually a guy driving a minibus, plus between 3 and 8 people doing the letter posting work per day, all of which were getting paid around £6 per hour or so, a bit more for the driver who was in charge of us rabble as well 😉 But, if we posted say 300 letters a day, and 200 of those then got a TV licence, it still made money. And there's the principle, if someone didn't have a TV licence, and they got a letter through the door, they'd mention it to others and the myth that the TV Licencing people knew everyone who didn't have a licence and would descend on them at any time could be continued. When in reality it was just a list of non-paying houses. Oh, and one thing that's not mentioned in the video, is that it's perfectly legal to NOT have a TV Licence, you could just show that you didn't use a TV for watching live TV. So if you have a TV just for a console or Video player without an ariel, that would be enough to stop them, if you even allowed them to bother you in the first place 😉 Technically, it says that if you have equipment capable of receiving a terrestrial TV signal, you are supposed to pay, but that includes everything from watches and phones all the way up to TV's these days, so it wouldn't be that hard a case to beat. All you would have to do is show that you don't watch the BBC basically, which isn't hard with the drivel that's on there these days.

It's the enforcers that were the really bad guys though. The people who used to work for collection agencies and the like. They knew full well that they had no powers whatsoever, but they would lie to the public, claiming that they had almost the same powers as the police! They'd try to bully their way into homes and demand to see anything you had which could even possibly receive a TV signal, even to the point of trying to climb in open windows! They were the scumbags that people think of when they think about TV Licencing men, the bullies with clipboards, big mouths and major attitude.

@@dahn57 I stopped watching the bbc after they sacked Jeremy clarkson never even watched bbc news.

The vans would have worked in the past. They were known technology that caught Eli Cohen in Syria for example. But these days the TV doesn't give off the same signals as it used to, there are more reasons to have TV without using BBC (games console plugged into it for example they didn't exist in the 1960s) AND with mobile phones and mobile broadband giving off the same signals anything those vans could detect would be so lost behind interference that every single house in the country would be lighting up as stealing signal. As such operating a fleet of vans now would lead to nothing more than exactly the same as just attending every listed address in the UK that hasn't paid for licence... 😂 It'll become a tax in the next few years and soon we'll all be paying for the BBC right put of income tax regardless of if we watch it I reckon.

Its just the facts so none of the banter just the information

Its a cut down version of an older video, removing everything other than the serious factual moments

​@@Marshallreallthanks

Believe it is

​@@finishlastguy that's a shame. The banter and rabbit trails is half the fun

How fat are these cats?

@@chrisdouglas1158 Now THAT'S the important question!

@@chrisdouglas1158 VERY fat!

It's basically an edited video. You look in the description, it links to the full episode

you'd need a pretty bang on antenna tho..

That's not how TV signals work. They work similar to sound waves. They can't skip over houses. What you're thinking of is cable, which they won't allow to reach your house if you're not paying for it.

@@-Nickname- You could request that a faraday cage be placed over your home.

@@mpf1947 Who in their right mind would ask for their house to be put in a cage?

​​@@-Nickname-It's 2023 my man, if homie wants to explore the inside of a cage, let 'em

Not really, because you cannot show that a TV is receiving a signal, it could be anything on a WIFI network.

@@dahn57 True, though the requirement for a TV license does stretch to BBC on demand services and live TV viewing - it could be argued that a wifi network found accessing these sites without a license is proof enough for the breach.

@@QuantumVLOG Agreed, and they would be able to prove that a specific IP address accessed it. You may be able to argue that a visiting friend with a recurrent licence was visiting at that time and using their own device, don't know if that might work 😉

LMAO Wind down the paranoia there bud! There was no detector vans really, just a bunch of idiots who were paid minimum wage to post letters through the doors of people who didn't have TV licence's registered to their address. Source: Me. I used to be one of those idiots posting the letters. We'd be given a stack of letters who didn't have licences on the register, and have to go find the addresses and post the letters. Many times there was not even a house there! Because it had been demolished years before (the database wasn't kept up to date), the street didn't exist (Yes, really) or they actually HAD a licence anyway, but the database hadn't been updated... You wouldn't believe the abuse we'd get sometimes... I once had a bunch of letters for addresses that turned out to be a camp of gypsies. A camp that was infamous for tearing into police if they dared go in... Yeah, those letters didn't get delivered 😛

Absolutely! But you can't convince the flat-earth lot😂