Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin:
“Yes they could - but even back when they existed there were only ever a very small number of real ones, most were just dummy vans which scared people in to buying a licence.
Back in the mid 70's I was taken inside one, and shown how it all worked - basically a lot of expensive professional radio and electronics gear, and two VERY highly skilled and qualified engineers to use it.
They were able to pick out individual TV's in the workshop, and tell me which channels they were on - and they were completely right on every one.
But as far as I'm aware there haven't been any for a number of decades now - far too expensive, and not cost effective. Much cheaper to send guys round knocking on doors.”
“Yes they could - but even back when they existed there were only ever a very small number of real ones, most were just dummy vans which scared people in to buying a licence.
Back in the mid 70's I was taken inside one, and shown how it all worked - basically a lot of expensive professional radio and electronics gear, and two VERY highly skilled and qualified engineers to use it.
They were able to pick out individual TV's in the workshop, and tell me which channels they were on - and they were completely right on every one.
But as far as I'm aware there haven't been any for a number of decades now - far too expensive, and not cost effective. Much cheaper to send guys round knocking on doors.”
I think the cost effectiveness changed with the penetration of tv's.
at some point when only a percentage of the population had a tv it made sense to get a list of people without a licence and use a detector van to work out if they had a tv.
as tv ownership reached near 100% any home without a tv licence had a high chance of having a tv and there were other ways of dealing with it.




