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Yes, 4K might be all up in our collective grills right now, but apparently some people haven’t even gotten on the colour bandwagon yet, let alone HD or UHD. The TV Licensing bods issued 13,202 monochrome licences last year for black and white TVs — what the hell?
According to the latest stats 41 per cent of the UK own an HDTV, which isn’t surprising, but are there really over 13,000 households that still watch everything through an ancient black and white TV? I mean, it’s not like anyone still makes and sells monochrome sets anymore, right?
Something tells me it all comes down to the money. A monochrome licence costs just over one-third of a colour one at £49. If you think about it, with 13,202 homes with black and white TVs, are the License cops really going to check them all? Seems like a load of cheeky sods are skimping on yet another tax, and I can’t really blame them. [BBC]
Image credit: Retro TV from Shutterstock
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Some 13,000 are pulling a fast one hahaha!
Yep, old dodge, but has worked for many decades, on the simple basis, you HAVE a licence, so don’t show on their radar!
I would doubt many B&W Televisions are still even functioning these days!
There are no detector vans – the TV licencing people just work on the assumption that everyone has a television so just pester the occupants any address that doesn’t have one.
It’s more or less random, too. I used to live in student halls and had a TV tuner in my PC. Of course, I didn’t have a license what with being a filthy student and all. I never once received a letter or anything.
However, the girl in the room right next to me didn’t have any kind of a TV and she DID receive numerous letters from them.
Nonsense, they made things to last in the old days.
The difficulty would be in getting your digital TV set top box,satellite or cable service to work with it as they lack a composite video output.
SKY still have an RF though put..
True!
Any chance of these B&W TVs have been mistaken by CCTVs?
No, read the article
I have and I found it to be a guess work.
i dont really mind the TV lic. i like some of the things the BBC make, i like iPlayer and i like the fact is has no adverts. Also there is always something to watch that is good on the BBC somewhere.. where as on the other billion commercially led channels its 900,000,000 billion zillion repeats and a full 12mins of adverts per hour.. (with the exception of my channels cos my channels rock and they are “educational” and cool) so compared to Sky or Virgin or BT i dont mind the TV lic. is not that bad..
The BBC is great and deserves all the money it gets, if anything, I think the TV lisence is too low, hasn’t risen in a while
let not get too far.. they do waste a lot of that on Eastenders.. which is anti-educational and should be come with a health warning..
I disagree with being forced to pay even if I didn’t want to use any of the BBC services, and is so not ‘too low’…
You’re not forced to pay it, no one is forcing you to have a TV
You know what I meant… I will consider that in future though since I don’t really watch much TV anyway nowadays.
Or 13000 people are blind/colour blind and colour capability on a TV has no preferential towards a programme having subtitles or audio description.
Don’t they get the licence free anyway?
err that’s not what colour blind means…
I mean fully colour blind. Not partially.
“Seems like a load of cheeky sods are skimping on yet another tax, and I can’t really blame them.”
Why not?
My 40 inch 3D LCD telly is black with a white power button.
Wossa problem?
I’m guessing the 41% of HDTVs is as high as that because most people upgrading from SD to HD were also trading in a huge bulky and heavy box for a nice slim profiled box. I know many people who have HDTVs but use less than 5% of the TV time with HD content.
To be fair, its quite hard to find an SD TV these days anyway.. but most broadcasts are still made in SD. Personally I use mine with an upscaling DVD player, and that’s about its only use!