If you lived in Britain, would this scare you into getting a TV license?

[Levin]

[19magic]

Eh it's all a bunch of bull, I've not had TV license for years. In the past I went 6 months without TV license while whatching telly. They rarely if ever actually do it and even if they do it's quite hard to prove it's your house and not another that is using telly. With all the flats around and terraced houses the amount of people per square mile, they won't catch anyone.

At one point they did mention extending the TV license to radios and at another point they tried to say that simply owning a telly is cause for TV license. That did not go down well, it's just the BBC trying to obtain more money as more and more people are fed up and have no need of watching live telly.

[goaded]

There was an old Fred Basset comic where his master is taking him for a walk and they see a detector van. "I've often wondered how they work", thinks the dog. Master looks thoughtful, then turns and walks into a post office. "Ah, that's how!".

(I think they really could detect working CRT TVs.)

[RebelinSteel]

Yep with a CRT, there were RF emissions from the IF circuits. The TV received signals from a broad range of RF frequencies, the Intermediate Frequency stage sort of tuned things to what you wanted to watch. It the the IF stage emissions that detector vans we’re looking for using very good detection systems, the electrons (beams) also emitted over specific frequencies and these were also looked for.