Declared that I don't require a TV licence. What's expected if they inspect my property?

[YoGatoradeMeBitch]

I've done a declaration online to say i don't need a TV licence since we only use Netflix and Amazon Instant Video. Its says online they may come and check. Anyone had this?

I don't mind them coming to check but I'm wondering how invasive it is? Will they want to check rooms for tvs etc? Really don't want a stranger in my bedroom!

[DadfromUncle]

areyoutheregoditsmemargaret Come off it. If you read the thread you'll find I said I would pay for bbc radio, just not tv. I am not doing anything illegal, nor advocating it, but I do admire Doris' honesty on this. Things I won't miss about the BBC when it has gone -
Soaps, sport, talent shows, natural history progs, antiques, property shows, dancing, baking, food, period dramas - that doesn't leave much, which is why I stopped it.

I also wont miss -

Six figure payoffs, huge taxi bills, hiring 20k a day portrait photographers, letting Saville and all the others do what they like, then trying to pretend it didn't happen, then giving the people who did that six figure payoffs. They are going to have to show that they are listening a lot more before I'll be paying for aTV licence again.

[Coffeemarkone]

I'm glad you all think it's so admirable to watch TV without a licence

well I am happy to have made your day, Margaret.
Personally I dont like subsidising child abuse, but hey, each to their own.

[SailorBob]

When we moved to our current address I just transferred the licence, which had always come out of my account. About 2 months later OH took it on himself to go buy a BIG TV, gave his name address as normal. Within 2 days they were knocking. Now I’ve always kept the licence near the door, I used to live in nursing residences and we were seen as an easy target, and some of them could be quite dodgy so it was a case of get rid of them as fast as possible (and then call everyone else to warn them ).

So anyway show him the licence, he complains that this isn’t the name he has. Oh says I, I’ve shown you that we have one. ‘But this isn’t the name. . .’

And? I take the licence back and close the door saying goodbye. He wanders away looking puzzled.

Turns up the next week, same guy, show him the licence again, He says ‘yes but I’ve spoken to your landlord and as you and Mr OH are tenants, you both need a licence.’

Really? Well I know that only applies if they are separate tenancy agreements, none of which matters in this case as I don’t have a landlord. We own the house.

He then starts shouting that I’m a liar and who do I think I am, he knows I’m lying, he’s coming in, get out of his way and starts to push at the door.

At this point he’s making so much noise 2 of the neighbours come out, and ask if I’m ok. Guy calms down, (not sure if the fact that they were both big burly types helped or not) I tell him if he doesn't leave now I'm calling the police, he goes, but shouting that he’ll be back with the police and then I’ll see. . .

Once I’d calmed down, I call the TV licencing people and complained, I get a wishy-washy apology, saying they’ll pass my concerns on to their representatives, but that they have a job to do blah blah.

I say that he if ever turns up at my door again I will not be opening it, but I will be calling the police as I now consider this to be harassment and their rep had already at the very least committed a Public order Offence, to be exact section 4 (I was wrong it’s actually section 3).

They've not been back in 5 years, which is a pity as next time I was going to get OH to answer the door in his police uniform.

It turned out he’d incorrectly told the 3 houses in the road that were renting that each adult in the house needed to have a separate TV licence. And if they paid now they’d avoid a fine, all 3 were couples or families who were not of UK origin, and all paid up. One of them, a couple and their 2 just adult kids, now had 4 TV licences. . .

All of which proves to me that they are just bullies, I actually have no issues with paying for it but I will not be bullied or harassed, anywhere, but most definitely not in my own home.

[Coffeemarkone]

Bob that is outrageous....

[DadfromUncle]

Bob - That's anothert thing I won't miss - innocent people being hounded by Crapita.

[specialsubject]

ethics - a county east of London....

the licensing rules have been overtaken by tech. But if you watch live TV without a license, you're a thief because you are using something that you should pay for. The fact that the BBC make crap cooking shows or have criminals in their employ does not change that. Stealing is stealing.

so if you do this, have the balls to recognise what you are. I also don't expect you to call the cops if you get burgled.

[DadfromUncle]

Oddly, BBC Watchdog doesn't seem to cover such rogue traders, not even when they were employing a benefit fraudster to help make the programme.

[Coffeemarkone]

oh please specialsubject, dont be ridiculous.
We are talking about criminal tactics being used by the BBC, and reactions to that.
Comparing us to burglars is just plain silly.

[bloodyteenagers]

Was wondering how long it would take for someone to spout the usual, you will miss it when it's gone.

I havent watched a bbc channel for 26 years. Sports, don't watch them. Natural history, discovery channel and the dinosaur thing sky one did was awesome, just 2 examples. Music, there's lots of dedicated channels that cater to the different genres of music 24/7 not occasionally aired. Then most households do have Internet, lots of content available

it doesn't have to be the end of the bbc. They need to get with the times and look at how they are funded. Continue and they will die anyway as more households ditch live tv in favor of Netflix etc. They could go subscription based, but I suspect unless forced to they won't becuase they know give people a choice and they won't subscribe. They see the figures. And their stubbornness will be their own demise.

[BeyondTheWall]

I was never able to wade in on "you'll miss the bbc when its gone" thanks to my love of top gear.

Now, umm, well...

[Coffeemarkone]

and no I am not a thief.
I do not choose to have shyte like Eastenders beamed into my lounge, thank you. To have ZERO choice and then be billed for it with scare tactics is more than a bit galling.

[bloodyteenagers]

And what about the criminal tactics from capita? That ok because they are protecting the poor little innocent bbc?

[Coffeemarkone]

sorry but 'if you dont have a tv licence then you are not due any police protection when you are burgled' is possibly one of the pure silliest comments I have ever read on an online forum. And that is going some.

[DadfromUncle]

Special - I don't watch live TV without a licence (or license as you prefer the US spelling), so according to you I can still call the cops. Which is a good thing, because I think I need to turn myself in for not buying any of the products I see advertised when I'm watching C4 on demand - that means I am not paying, so I must be a thief, right?

[HeadDreamer]

I don't even watch the BBC. Only Netflix and Amazon prime here. I'm sure I'm not the only one who find live TV annoying. It's never on when you want to watch. And PVR is such antiquated technology. Oh you can record the show later to watch? Then I have to remember to record isn't it? What's wrong with browsing a catalogue to see what I can watch NOW. And continue watching it on my tablet when I change screen? (DD1 does that a lot. She uses the TV in the late afternoon when I make dinner but her tablet at other times).

[Metacentric]

The vans are no more use than an ice cream van. They have never worked.

The physics of the detector vans was basically sound; old-style CRTs radiate like crazy, to the point that it's not hard to rig up equipment to reproduce on a remote screen what's being shown on the subject's screen.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking

You can read a paper from the late 1990s by the ubiquitous Ross Anderson and Marcus Kuhn on the topic, complete with pictures of the sort of quality you can recover from a remote TV display with fairly crude equipment (warning, contains maths):

www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf

It's much, much harder to do this with LCD displays because they don't have big high current coils to do the transmitting. But I would be fairly relaxed about believing you can recover something from an HDMI cable given the right equipment and that Freeview receivers are probably cheap and nasty and spill quite a lot of intermediate frequencies. Certainly, the military worry about this stuff:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)

None of this says that the TV detector vans ever were real or ever worked, but it's certainly not true to say that such things could never have worked.

[HeadDreamer]

And yes top gear is now on Amazon prime.

[HeadDreamer]

metacentric I can't see how they can tell you are streaming a live stream or a catch up, unless they make the ISP to log BBC I player live stream traffic.

[DadfromUncle]

Nice summary metacentric. My guess is that they always relied on the theoretical possibilities rather than building actual tech - that was left to spooks and the military. In any case, it was much easier when there was only one way to get TV. OK, you might be able to pick up what's on my hdmi - but it would take a lot of tech and you'd need to be able to match it to one of a huge number of live transmissions in real time - not a trivial task.

[Metacentric]

I can't see how they can tell you are streaming a live stream or a catch up, unless they make the ISP to log BBC I player live stream traffic.

That wasn't what I was writing about, but I don't quite see your point. The people that originate the content (ie, the BBC, or their Level 3-operated CDN) can log the streams themselves, and indeed I'm sure they do, like every other website operator. What they can't do is perform the mapping IP number->household->licence-status, because in order to get the physical address relating to an IP number at a particular point they would need to use RIPA powers that they don't have. However, that could be changed by statutory instrument, or in principle the BBC could commit suicide and try a Norwich Pharmacal order. I think the political fallout from trying to even suggest doing this would be catastrophic (even elderly buffers from the Telegraph can see why it is entirely disproportionate) but that doesn't make it impossible.

Returning the the TEMPEST theme, of a course if (and I stress if) you had the technology to grab the screen from a remote LCD display, which I wouldn't place entirely outside the bounds of possibility although I couldn't imagine anyone this side of the spookiest spooks in fact having the capability, then simply showing that there was a display in a household displaying BBC1 live would be sufficient.

The whole licence thing is an anachronism. But I do find the bien pensant middle-class consensus on it (oh, you'll miss it when it's gone, theft, etc) somewhat odd given that the Guardian classes are normally opposed to regressive taxation, which this quite clearly is. If we want state broadcasting to be state funded, we should fund it from general taxation, but the reason no-one dares suggest that is that it would be blatantly anti-competitive. Hence the current nonsense. The BBC should move to a subscriber model; I can then pay for Radio 4 and BBC4 and people that want to watch shite on BBC1 can do so without my help.

[DadfromUncle]

Metacentric - totally agree with your comments on subs/licence - it would be a piece of piss to implement, but BBC want business as usual.

[Metacentric]

OK, you might be able to pick up what's on my hdmi - but it would take a lot of tech and you'd need to be able to match it to one of a huge number of live transmissions in real time

I think I read somewhere that such detector vans as there were purported to worked by picking up the intermediate frequencies from superheterodyne VHF (in the days of 405 line B&W) and UHF receivers. I'd be sceptical about the ability of such a detector to triangulate positions accurately without a massive antenna but it's in principle possible. So if that was the operating mechanism, it would continue to work just as well today: the front end for a Freeview receiver is a UHF superhet just the same as for analogue TV. The licence is for reception within the band, so if you are operating a receiver tuned to the frequency of one of the multiplexes it doesn't matter whether or not you then convert that to a picture, you still need a licence for it.

[DadfromUncle]

Meta - but if I am using my smart tv to watch catchup and it also has a tuner, I assume it doesn't power down the tuner? Also (I know we are venturing into the realms of the esoteric here - I have removed all my aerial connections and detuned fwiw) it is legal to use a freeview telly to listen to radio -both my TVs allow you to turn the screen off for this but a detector would still "find" UHF

[DodgedAnAsbo]

The TV detector vans were real and they worked. But they were used to scare people and were not admissible as sole evidence.

The way they work is simple. A TV can only show a screen based upon a single particular frequency, but the signals coming in are different for each channel.
In order the get the incoming signal to the proper frequency it is 'mixed' with another signal.
Detector vans detect this 'mixing' frequency, and they can pinpoint the channel and location quite accurately.

They are mostly useless these days because many devices do not use 'mixing'.

As far as the principle of licencing is concerned, it stinks. The government is taking away the right to do something perfectly harmless and free, then selling you back permission to do it. it stinks