[jem]

Many, many decades ago, my late brother had a TV which for some reason had a built-in cable tuner. He had moved somewhere which had an early version of cable TV, so as an experiment he connected the TV to the cable feed, which, oddly enough was live.

He was able to get the FTA channels, and also, with a bit of scanning, get some of the ‘premium’ channels. Obviously, back in those days nothing was encrypted and could just be picked up by anyone with the right equipment - presumably it was assumed that this would be so few people that they could be ignored.

Wasn’t this how the original BSB went out of business?

I vaguely recall an ‘advert’ for the licence fee, showing an operator in a detector van, reporting that a person in a particular address didn't have a licence, but were watching TV, and, he checked watch, were watching ‘Columbo’!

The detector vans, sort of worked but could never pin down a particular address, so were more of a deterrent than anything else. Then as now, were someone to knock on your door claiming that you are watching TV without a licence and they need to come in and check, you are certainly within your rights to refuse entry and close the door on them.