TV Licence

[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.

BSB didn’t go out of business (not officially anyway). BSB and Sky were both loss-making at the time of their merger, though it’s likely Sky would probably have pulled through without BSB in the end. BSB failed because the satellite tech it opted for required a ton of broadcast power and had room for fewer channels. With the whole premise of subscription TV being quantity of channels, it was always going to look like the poor relation to Sky. The other fatal flaw was in the way spectrum was allocated to national satellite broadcasters in Europe. BSB was the ‘official’ UK broadcaster and occupied the frequencies allocated to the UK. But Rupert Murdoch simply acquired spectrum allocated to Luxembourg and launched a system that was cheaper to buy. He created a competitive market for satellite TV that was never meant to exist and BSB wasn’t designed to resist.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by nodrogd

Until cable in the UK went digital (early 2000s), the boxes provided were just frequency converters that changed the incoming cable VHF channel to a fixed UHF channel tuned on the TV. Hence the IF circuit would still be working & leaking the channel output.

Wow I didnt realise that,thank you!!

Interesting..... Sounds like CRTs didnt didnt keep quiet!

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

They used to transmit UHF down the cable you could just an adapter plug it into the TV in and get terrestrial. They transmitted FM too Well NTL did round here anyway

NTL was putting out all 5 public service channels on UHF frequencies you could tune on a TV directly, at least in Hemel Hempstead in the early 2000s it was because that’s what we used. There was no rooftop aerial on our first house and while there had been no active sub to cable in the house for years the wall box was still there and still connected to the tap in the street cab.

When the BBC started launching ‘digital channels’ as they were once known (like BBC 3) these were also available to us on analogue UHF this way. Occasionally cable-only channels were also receivable, like L!ve TV, which wasn’t much of a bonus TBH.

[Jaymoss]

Originally Posted by Chris

NTL was putting out all 5 public service channels on UHF frequencies you could tune on a TV directly, at least in Hemel Hempstead in the early 2000s it was because that’s what we used. There was no rooftop aerial on our first house and while there had been no active sub to cable in the house for years the wall box was still there and still connected to the tap in the street cab.

When the BBC started launching ‘digital channels’ as they were once known (like BBC 3) these were also available to us on analogue UHF this way. Occasionally cable-only channels were also receivable, like L!ve TV, which wasn’t much of a bonus TBH.

The adapter I meant was just to change the cable connector from screw to rf :-) it was the same for us too. The NTL wall boxes had a separate FM connector you could use on your amp

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

The adapter I meant was just to change the cable connector from screw to rf :-) it was the same for us too. The NTL wall boxes had a separate FM connector you could use on your amp

Yes, I never tried out the FM hookup though the person we bought the house from said it worked. She kindly left behind the F-to-aerial adapter she’d been using for TV.

[nodrogd]

Originally Posted by Chris

NTL was putting out all 5 public service channels on UHF frequencies you could tune on a TV directly, at least in Hemel Hempstead in the early 2000s it was because that’s what we used. There was no rooftop aerial on our first house and while there had been no active sub to cable in the house for years the wall box was still there and still connected to the tap in the street cab.

When the BBC started launching ‘digital channels’ as they were once known (like BBC 3) these were also available to us on analogue UHF this way. Occasionally cable-only channels were also receivable, like L!ve TV, which wasn’t much of a bonus TBH.

Hemel headend had at one time 8 analogue channels you could tune directly via the converters UHF bypass. BBC1 London, BBC2 London, ITV London, ITV Anglia, Channel 4, Channel 5, West Herts TV (Local channel with a studio on the top floor of Comtel's building on the Maylands estate, which closed when NTL took over) & a rolling programme guide. The cable VHF spectrum could only accomodate around 35 analogue channels, so when additional capacity was required, UHF spectrum was used (hence you could tune some of these channels directly on a TV if NTL had not removed the sync pulses).

[gunner45]

As we're talking about analogue TV... even when digital cable was introduced some cablecos kept the analogue TV signals running down their cable alongside the digital signals until the late 2000s I think. These old cable set-top boxes from that era had an internal analogue tuner which would decode and output those unencrypted analogue RF feeds directly to your TV from PSBs like BBC and ITV. I recall someone saying that it was theft to get these channels if you no longer subscribed to cable TV but still had your box which remained connected to the cabinet.

I think this is drifting off topic somewhat.