How does over the air broadcast television work in the United Kingdom? If I had a new television set with a decent aerial (antenna), how many television channels could I expect to watch in a big city? How does the television license work?
Free-to-view* TV in the UK is broadcast digitally as ‘Freeview’(terrestrial) or ‘Freesat’(satellite). These both have all the main channels (from BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5), plus a load of others - a slightly different assortment of channels for Freeview vs Freesat, but about 30 or so channels each (I didn’t count)
*Free, except the licence.
The TV licence is about £150 per year and if you have television equipment capable of receiving live TV broadcasts, you are required to have one (even if you never watch BBC, who get all the money from it)
There are many paid-for suppliers of TV services via cable, satellite and internet - such as Sky, Virgin Media, BT - and their subscription packages include additional channels and services that are not part of free-to-view broadcasting. You still need a TV licence if you get your TV this way.
This is the digital TV (analogue TV stopped broadcasting a few years ago) coverage checker, with the address set to Buckingham Palace. You can expand the information on channels to see exactly what the queen might choose to watch:
If you have a TV which you use to watch terrestrial TV (any channels) or if you stream or download from the BBC iplayer then you need to have a TV licence, though you only need one per houshold rather than per TV or person. Doing the above things without a TV licence is a criminal offence and you could be fined. There is a TV Licencing Authority that go around with ‘detector’ vans seeking out people watching TV without licences. I understand they actually catch people out using a bit of basic detective work rather than the mysterious technology which they have claimed to have in the past that can detect people watching TV (as a TV is just a receiver it would be difficult to see how such a technology would work).
I gave up scrolling through the channel guide at about 50 - deep into The Jewelry Channel territory by that point, hadn’t even reached Babestation yet.
This basic detective work involves having two things: 1) a list of all the addresses in the UK, and 2) a list of all the addresses in the UK with a TV licence. It’s not much more complicated than that.
Most of us have a digital decoder these days, or subscribe to Sky via satellite, Virgin via cable, or BT via the internet. Decoders can be built in to the TV or separate with a PVR.
Sky Virgin and BT all require a subscription and the cost varies a lot, depending on what package you want. Sport and films usually add most of the cost. Internet and landline telephone is often included in the package.
Watching OTA TV, via a decoder is free, apart from the £150 a year licence noted above. There are a lot of channels, most of which are somewhat specialist and/or repeats of other channels; some of them (like the porn channels) require a subscription. Apart from those people who live in bad reception areas; usually in a valley with a hill between them and the transmitter. the number of available channels is the same all over the country. There are some regional differences in content though.
It has to be – how do they demonstrate there is watching going on?
I remember years ago the licensing agency ran TV ads showing vans with antennae on the top and guys inside with monitors, who would say something like, “I see the people at No 37 are watching Monty Python.” It was all total BS, there was no such technology, it was simply a scare tactic to frighten people into buying licenses. As stated above the only method the Post Office (who were in charge of licensing at the time) ever used was a national database of addresses and the assumption that everyone had a TV set until proved otherwise.
Theoretically a sensitive receiver could pick up the intermediate frequency(ies) in the TV, but just looking in the window is much easier.
One could argue you only use it to watch DVDs, but unless you are using a monitor incapable of getting broadcasts I’m guessing the authorities would not believe you.
Brian
They don’t have to.
The law assumes you don’t buy a tv as an ornament.
You’re licensing the household to have the equipment, rather than for the use you make of it.
FWIW in London I get something like 145 channels through my Freeview PVR, and a whole suite of radio channels as well.
Quite a few of the more obscure channels use some different data technology that I don’t understand, apart from their being slower to load up. There’s a Japanese one, an Afrikaans one, sundry holy rollers, Russia Today, Al Jazeera and China Central English services, endless shopping channels, and quite a few that seem to recycle the same property porn programmes over and over again, as well as the Adult services.
When I first got the extra Freeview channels, I was glad to catch up on some ancient drama and documentary series I missed when they first came out decades ago, but now some of them seem to be on a loop and distinctly outstaying their welcome.
The technology was sort of possible - the high frequency electronics inside CRT televisions emits radio waves of its own, and these radio waves would be modulated by whatever was appearing on the actual screen - so it was possible to match these against one of the handful of channels broadcasting at the time.
The precision of directionality was exaggerated, and it’s possibly true that the licensing authority never actually had a functional detector apparatus on patrol, but the technology wasn’t complete fiction.
The end of CRT displays would have made it harder - but you’re right - the productive work of enforcing licences was done by footwork and intimidation.
wow, a TV license. Do you need a license to have a dog too?
Licence, please! We’re talking about the UK here.
Only in Northern Ireland. Dog licensing in Great Britain ended in the 1980s, but you do have to register your dog with the local government, and have it microchipped.
Not theory at all. Radio and television receivers “transmit” a fairly robust signal inherently by their design. Sensitive direction finding equipment would be able to locate eg triangulate either transmitters or receivers. Probably the Gestapo was able to bust German citizens listening to Allied broadcasts during the war, as this was considered a crime. There were “peoples radios” available cheaply but they had a limited tuning range and or were crippled. In the US foreign nationals and others were prohibited from listening to shortwave broadcasts or owning shortwave capable recievers. Radio repair shops routinely disabled shortwave capable radios during this time period.
They mostly just send blustering letters to all the unlicensed homes.
I imagine you were joking, but I don’t think there’s any obligation (in either direction) for us to use each others’ spelling of common words. If I’m asking an American about the paint on their car, I’ll say “what colour is it?”, not “what color is it?”.
Yeah, I guess I meant ‘about 30 that are remotely worth watching’. I sort of forgot all the shopping, gambling, chat and porn channels - and the audio-only channels.
I seem to recall that they are using ‘packet sniffing’ to identify users downloading tv via their cable.
This was a widely remembered Public Information Film of many years ago - YouTube
Most TV receivers emit a small signal on the frequency they are tuned to (most radio receivers too, for that matter).
If you want to take your dog or cat on holiday with you to the Continent, you have it micro-chipped and it needs a passport too.
The TV licence (there used to be one for radio too) is essentially a charge to receive television signals. It used only to apply to OTA or cable, but now applies to internet as well. As mentioned above it is used to pay for the BBC. At £12.50 a month, it’s a good bargain.