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Thread: TV Licences Australia

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    Default TV Licences Australia

    This is an hilarious read considering the many platforms TV can be delivered today
    Hard to think this actually took place
    Even harder to think it is still currently in place in the UK and some other countries

    The Licence you pay for but there is no test to pass!



    Last edited by ol' boy; 25-05-19 at 04:56 AM.
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    Don't give them F#cking ideas, delete it immediately!
    Cheers
    Ted (Al)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Al Bundy View Post
    Don't give them F#cking ideas, delete it immediately!
    They get it with every TV they sell now
    But i see your point, they love the ol "Double Dip"
    If u want to go on an expedition get a Land Rover, if u want to come home from an expedition get a Landcruiser!

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    Why is it, you think, that many TV aerials back then were mounted inside the roof cavity?
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    The British had men in vans driving around with radios listening for the IF frequency of unlicensed TV receivers.

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    Quote Originally Posted by shred View Post
    The British had men in vans driving around with radios listening for the IF frequency of unlicensed TV receivers.
    I just did a quick scan of the wiki on IF frequencies but without a knowledge (my background is electro mechanical switching) of RF stuff and radio (per se). Nor did I "read" all that was presented. How the hell can they tell that you were "receiving" any signal. I can understand the concept of transmitting. Surely, however, a receiver is a passive device. e.g. if I LOOK at something, how can a person (who cannot see me) know what I am LOOKING at?


    In simple terms i.e. for an idiot (me) who knows that if you "push those buttons" I can watch Sesame Street.
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    Default not quite

    Quote Originally Posted by lsemmens View Post
    I just did a quick scan of the wiki on IF frequencies but without a knowledge (my background is electro mechanical switching) of RF stuff and radio (per se). Nor did I "read" all that was presented. How the hell can they tell that you were "receiving" any signal. I can understand the concept of transmitting. Surely, however, a receiver is a passive device. e.g. if I LOOK at something, how can a person (who cannot see me) know what I am LOOKING at?


    In simple terms i.e. for an idiot (me) who knows that if you "push those buttons" I can watch Sesame Street.
    with an am receiver you can hear the hoz section if you are close enuf to it and the sets running
    thats what they used ,like a sparkgap generater from the ht on the crt

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    Yeah, Seems unlikley to me.
    As said, it's receiving a signal on a carrier wave that is all about. Also you would have houses in close proximity with sets and the tech in the 50=70's wasn't exactly pin point accurate with anything. maybe they were looking for amateur 2 way HAM radio operators but tv I think would be a VERY long shot and with so many homes in Britain being flats and semi detached, They would IMHO be doing more door to door knocking than they would be radio based detecting.

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    Here’s some interesting reading. Officially, they don’t say how the vans work, but state:

    Although the operating principles of the TV detectors used in these vans were not revealed by the BBC, it was thought that they operated by detecting electromagnetic radiation given off by a TV.[5] The most common suggested method was the detection of a signal from the TV's local oscillator.[6]

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    Default Does anyone here actually know how to discover the truth ?

    sorry george /shred you got it wrong !!!!? its very real .The high voltage on the cathoray tube is about 7kv plus so a few milliamps leakage makes a good transmitter at the hoz frequency 1625khz from memory so a am radio receiver tuned to that freq can pick it up a fair distance away , and with a df loop tuned to that freq direction can be obtained and on more sig at right angles gives quite good pinpoint accuracy and your nabbed by the radio inspector nazi , anyone in the trade knows this wiki is not the complete authority on everything theres no secret about it , putting the aerial in the roof was bull sh,t just for looks only
    Last edited by hinekadon; 26-05-19 at 07:39 PM. Reason: more

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    Thanks mate, (hinekadon), that explains it all, If TFTs were available back then, they'd be stuffed!
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    A lot has changed since the sixties.
    Back then vans could pick up the local oscillator signal with sensitive equipment which was 455khz or 10.7Mhz apart from the received frequency in radios.
    Yes and the horizontal stage of TVs blasted out a lot interference too, just like today's switch mode power supplies, although it was fairly low around 16 kHz so children at least could hear it, I did.
    I think they actually looked for the oscillator for the audio carrier which was 5.5Mhz but harmonics out of the horizontal stage may have worked too.

    Back then there were no SMPS, everything was very quiet but the main reason why you could detect these appliances was the way they were built, actually beautifully for people who adore this old stuff but this also meant that the wiring or later PCB tracks of local oscillator were relatively long, especially with valve appliances so this did leak RF.
    I had no trouble picking up the oscillator from one radio with another next to it.

    I knew of people hiding their TV antenna in the roof cavity, but they also needed very heavy curtains to block the tell tale blueish illumination that even back and white sets made.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 26-05-19 at 09:26 PM.
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    Unfortunately folks this one always was a myth. But a very effective myth and one that was very easy to perpetuate with just a bit of technical speculation. It's amusing that it still has that much momentum after all these years.

    Don't confuse Plausibility with practicality. The Vans were real, the enforcement real, but the technology was not.

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    Disguise the tellie as a microwave - the antenna is to help brown the meat

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    It was all about antennas, well visible ones that is. Explains why the old house I bought in Sydney some decades ago had the TV antenna set up in the ceiling cavity under the tile roof

    Now I'm recalling those awful Frank Thring 'scare' ads to get people paying for their licenses. It was even proposed in the 70's when colour transmissions started to have separate colour and B&W licenses but fortunately the whole license scheme was dropped before that was implemented.

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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    Unfortunately folks this one always was a myth.
    They were not a myth, in Germany at least, but it is true that the vans were mostly used to locate interference from faulty appliances and other sources.
    So if your TV was leaking too much RF AND you were unlicensed(after being asked formerly if you were using TV/radio), tough luck because you could crop heavy fines for both.
    Generally they had other very sneaky tricks up their sleeves to catch unlicensed listeners and viewers more efficiently.

    In the 1970's the vans were quite busy picking up illegal CB radios.
    Hearing CB radio coming out of your phono cartridge louder than the music pissed off a lot of people.
    Then again a lot got caught without the vans too because they HAD to show off with their 100W burners.
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    Same myth different country nomeat.

    Everybody in the UK knows crop circles are faked. But in Germany, they really are made by UFO's.

    Same with VG2's. You might make the argument the science is real because VG2 detectors are real and they work on the principle. But the scenario is completely different.

    CB's, that is a different kettle of fish again. Yes that is real. I now people who were famously nicked for it.
    A few of them made a home movie based on this activity. It's a very low grade movie and I may have posted the url here before.


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    Nice vid trash. Knew Julie and Jenny and all them bloody cats very well in the 90's

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    Kilowatt Barry put it up on youtube.
    I accidentally crossed paths with Allan at Port Macquarie field day last year. He was very surprised to hear somebody say the words "night of the pirate" and stories of the batman were shared.

    I recon I could name most of his cats.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Skepticist View Post
    It was all about antennas, well visible ones that is. Explains why the old house I bought in Sydney some decades ago had the TV antenna set up in the ceiling cavity under the tile roof

    Now I'm recalling those awful Frank Thring 'scare' ads to get people paying for their licenses. It was even proposed in the 70's when colour transmissions started to have separate colour and B&W licenses but fortunately the whole license scheme was dropped before that was implemented.
    the reason the licenses were scrapped is because the whitlam government came in and funded the abc directly other wise only the well off would have been able to afford a license

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