TV Licence Super Thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken
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Wi-Fi detection vans hahaha,What a joke.

Good luck with that BBC you wont prove crap.

I feel sad for everyone's TV licenses going up too to pay for all these vans.
 
Nevakonaza said:
Wi-Fi detection vans hahaha,What a joke.

Good luck with that BBC you wont prove crap.

I feel sad for everyone's TV licenses going up too to pay for all these vans.
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I am sure they are spending more on catching people that don't pay the licences then the cost of those licences. But I agree it only proves someone was watching Iplayer not who. There is no way to prove it wasn't a relative or friend. I know they spent more money trying to convince me to get a licence over the cost of a licence.




muon said:
Have they cracked WPA2?

edit:

Just read it a bit more. So they will look at the size and frequency of wifi packets.

Surely both of those are determined by the router itself and the speed of your internet connection.
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If its running smoothly then it sounds doable to me just not reliable. They could sneak some indications into the packets but it only proves someone streamed from Iplayer not who was watching or even what was being watched. I once had to run a packet sniffer at work to see which device and what data was flooding the network and was surprised how much one could see.

I bet one of the reasons they don't want to go into details is its partly a scare tactic. For all we know the method they use only works on old WEP and outdated Wireless systems. It sounds like they are just using free software like Wireshark.
 
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spoffle said:
I'm not convinced that detector vans actually exist though.
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Weren't they a big fraud before? I remember they use to advertise they could see what you were watching from a street away.

I think I read this was rubbish, even with CRT TV's they would have practically needed to be standing next to the TV with the detector for it to work.

If your worried turn off your Wifi and use a Powerline adaptor. Job done.
 
spoffle said:
I'm not convinced that detector vans actually exist though.
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They did exist in small numbers, we used to be able to see how many in I think it was the BBC financial reports? How effective they are is another thing altogether. A lot of them are fake and they don't work on modern systems and more telling is they have never been used as evidence in Court. One van did get caught filming someone house then it drive off in a hurry when getting caught in the act, hit another car then drove away without stopping all caught on film.

There must be some truth to this as the BBC was able to demonstrate the technology.
 
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Third Opinion said:
Weren't they a big fraud before? I remember they use to advertise they could see what you were watching from a street away.

I think I read this was rubbish, even with CRT TV's they would have practically needed to be standing next to the TV with the detector for it to work.

If your worried turn off your Wifi and use a Powerline adaptor. Job done.
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People managed to get photos of the inside of the vans, and they were just minibuses. Seats and only seats were inside them.

Pottsey said:
They did exist in small numbers, we used to be able to see how many in I think it was the BBC financial reports? How effective they are is another thing altogether. A lot of them are fake and they don't work on modern systems and more telling is they have never been used as evidence in Court. One van did get caught filming someone house then it drive off in a hurry when getting caught in the act, hit another car then drove away without stopping all caught on film.

There must be some truth to this as the BBC was able to demonstrate the technology.
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They have not and will not demonstrate the TV detector vans working to anyone but very select people, and as you've said have never used data from a detector van as evidence in court. If they actually worked then they'd use them as evidence regularly.
 
spoffle said:
People managed to get photos of the inside of the vans, and they were just minibuses. Seats and only seats were inside them.
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That's because the way they detect if you are watching TV is to have someone sitting in the van with a camera pointing at your front window hoping to catch you in the act of watching TV.
 
Bit off topic, but interesting to see all the criticism of NBC doing the US Olympics opening ceremony coverage, on reddit and elsewhere:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nbc-olympics-faces-criticism-tape-917796
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4weh2r/nbc_olympics_faces_criticism_for_tape_delay/
https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/comments/4wdir4/nbc_is_ruining_these_olympics_so_far_with_all/
https://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/comments/4wdhiv/wtf_nbc_your_olympic_coverage_is_terrible/

I thought the BBC coverage was sensational. Apart from occasional weird comments the commentators were very knowledgeable, and needless to say there were no interruptions. People watching NBC say it felt like adverts every few minutes.
 
spoffle said:
People managed to get photos of the inside of the vans, and they were just minibuses. Seats and only seats were inside them.



They have not and will not demonstrate the TV detector vans working to anyone but very select people, and as you've said have never used data from a detector van as evidence in court. If they actually worked then they'd use them as evidence regularly.
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IIRC the principle behind it is very simple, but "detector vans" as such probably haven't existed since the days of transister radios (the equipment needed with valves would have been bulky much like old standard valve radios hence a van used, I suspect a transistor version would have fitted in a car and you could probably make a handheld version now).
Certainly old Radio and TV sets definitely put out easily detectable emissions based on the tuner, modern ones apparently still do but it's at a lower level (so you need more sensitive gear, but then the background noise in those frequencies is also lower now, and the equipment for radio receivers has got more sensitive).

The most plausible suggestion I've seen is that they've never used the evidence in court because it would be too costly and time consuming to explain and prove beyond reasonable doubt that the signal was from the property, so instead the vans were used to show the capability was there, but they use confessions and visual evidence.


*Even now you still get questions over speed cameras and speed detectors being reliable and every now and then the police have to fly in a manufacturers rep to spend several days going into great detail the checks and reliability the units go through.
 
The vans were empty and the *hand held* detectors were comically fake.

The BBC rely on making peoples lives as uncomfortable as possible to scare them into paying, they have no detecting equipment. The worst I heard them doing was many years ago they used to phone you up and pretend to do a survey with questions about TV viewing habits.
 
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