]so...does anyone know when these TVLA vans are out and about? i'm sure they don't post their schedule on their website or anything...but i've never even seen one of these vans. do they go out in unmarked vans as well? are there cities/towns that these guys cruise more often (like london, birmingham, etc.)?
These days, they're going to target areas where they think they'll stand the most chance of catching unlicensed viewers: Poorer neighborhoods, student-bedsit land, etc. Ever since TV Licensing was transferred to Capita (a private company operating under government support), it's all become a matter of maximizing revenue. Inspectors can receive a bonus, either for a successful prosecution or for each unlicensed homeowner they bully into buying a license. Thus the areas which are more likely to have unlicensed viewers are more lucrative. That's not to say they'll never catch up with somebody living in fancy neighborhoods, just that the surveillance is likely to turn up fewer unlicensed households and is thus less profitable.
The visible detector vans don't seem to be anywhere near as common these days as in the past (there really were ones which drove around years ago with "TV Detector" or similar on the side). I haven't seen one for many years.
Considering the expense of running and equipping the vehicles, not to mention paying for engineers to go around in them, it's much more cost-effective these days to just rely on intimidation and keep sending out the threatening letters to any house on their list which doesn't have a license.
as i understand it, you need to hold a TV license to watch a TV in your house, but aren't required to buy a separate TV license for every TV in your house (please correct me if i'm wrong).
Correct.
if i were renting a room in a house and didn't have a TV license, but someone else renting another room had one, how would i get caught? i'm assuming (and this might be a big assumption) that the TVLA van cruises by, picks up that there is a TV in the house that's on, looks in their records, sees that a TV license is registered to that address and moves on to the next house with them being none the wiser that there is another TV in the house that isn't licensed. yes? no?
It would probably depend upon how many entries they had for the house in their database. In accommodation such as you describe, they may already know that the house is divided and rented in parts to different "households." If they've already had licenses from 1234 Acacia Ave. Flat 1, 1234 Acacia Ave. Flat 2, and 1234 Acacia Ave. Flat 3, then they'll be checking on the basis that it has three separate apartments/households. If they only have a single address but it becomes clear that the house is being used as separate rented apartments, they'll split the address and turn it into the appropriate number of separate addresses. They could also use official post office lists for the area which will indicate separate addresses.
In places which have been separate but are now just one household, it can be almost impossible to get them to put everything back to one address again. Back in the 1980s, my parents owned two shops, one of which they rented to somebody else. They were numbered 33 and 34. Our accommodation extended -- as a single unit -- right across the top of both, although originally it had been two separate flats, 33A and 34A. We had a license as 33A, yet we still kept receiving the threatening letters to "Get a license or else" sent to 34A.
I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that it is impossible to scan for radiation from TVs...
I can assure you that it's quite possible. TV sets contain several oscillators (line and field scan, local oscillator in the tuner, chroma subcarrier), all of which radiate small fields at different frequencies, and it is these which can be detected. Other equipment
can generate similar signals though, which is why detector evidence alone is not sufficient for a prosecution.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the authorities don't "play up" this aspect, for they undoubtedly do. It's cheaper to convince everyone that detector vans are on the prowl in the hundreds than to actually send out that many.
As I said earlier, the main enforcement these days is the database and the reliance on a non-stop stream of intimidating letters to unlicensed addresses, backed up by visits from TVL Gestapo agents. Or in many cases, backed up by
threats of such visits, which never actually take place. (If you've never seen the letters, have a look at the examples on the link above. The whole tone of them is intimidating in the extreme.)
Once a TVL thug is actually dispatched to a house, by far the majority of convictions then arise from people admitting guilt, believing that they've been caught red-handed. The number of convictions where TVL has actually provided sufficient evidence to
prove unlawful viewing in court is in the minority.
• The use of a television set, which is powered solely by its own internal batteries will be covered for any address by the user’s main home licence. However, if the user plugs the set into the mains or connects it to any external power source such as a car battery, a separate licence would be needed.
That change was slipped in with no fanfare some years ago. At one time, the main license covered all those uses. Changing it to "only if it has internal batteries" was a pretty nasty trick.
