Period Television

[Flyfisher]

Anyone here still using a monochrome television?

Apparently there are 13,202 licenced users out there somewhere. :lol:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20957218

 

[LadyArowana]

I wonder if the people get horrid threatening letters from the authorities? If they refuse to believe anyone doesn't have a TV then they would surely be even more sceptical about someone with only a B & W licence. We continually get very very unpleasant correspondence from them, I got so fed up I eventually went to the website and completed some stupid form to tell them we didn't have a TV. They are supposed to leave you alone for a couple of years after that, but I very much doubt they will.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Good luck with that m'lady. One of my friends who had paid his licence fee kept getting visits from the licence police. One time they read him his rights to try and scare him! Talk about a bit of power going to someones head. When his wife got the camera out and started taking pictures of said jobsworth to make an official complaint, he disappeared quickly. I think the system works well 99% of the time, but when it breaks there is no way to fix it as there is no human point of contact.

 

[LadyArowana]

Good luck with that m'lady. One of my friends who had paid his licence fee kept getting visits from the licence police. One time they read him his rights to try and scare him! Talk about a bit of power going to someones head. When his wife got the camera out and started taking pictures of said jobsworth to make an official complaint, he disappeared quickly. I think the system works well 99% of the time, but when it breaks there is no way to fix it as there is no human point of contact.

:lol: they always say they are going to come and visit us too, as I sit and watch my TV in Singapore I like to imagine them huddled in a freezing van waiting for me to come home.

 

[Flyfisher]

We had a couple of years of hassle from TVL because our house has two addresses dating back from the time when part of it was rented out. It's easy to see how some people get very worried about the threatening tone of their letters. I wrote to them once explaining our situation but they still kept sending the letters and threatening to send their 'enforcement officers' blah, blah, blah. So I just ignored their other letters and was quite looking forward to a visit, but nobody from TVL has ever turned up. After a couple of years they gave up writing to me.

There are some entertaining websites describing the letters and arguments that people without televisions have had from TVL. Apparently, in UK law, there is an 'implied right of access' to homes (well, the front door anyway), which allows for people with legitimate reason to enter your land and knock on your door - which makes perfect sense in terms of postmen, milkmen, couriers and other similar people. However, that implied right of access can be revoked at any time by writing to the organisation concerned confirming its withdrawal for any of their employees.

I was tempted to do this in order to provoke them into dispatching one of their TV detector vans (the effectiveness of which is apparently a subject of some debate), which wouldn't have done them any good since they would not be able to legally get within 60m of the house anyway, which is the stated range of such vans! In the end I decided that just ignoring them was the easier option.

The other thing they don't like to talk about is that you only actually require a TV licence if you watch broadcast programmes at the times they are transmitted (which includes video recording). But all those 'on demand' services such as BBC iPlayer, 4OD etc, can be used quite legally with no television licence at all.

 

[another_richard]

Hopefully they will have read this:

http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Withholding%20implied%20right%20of%20access.htm

 

[Flyfisher]

:lol:
Well, that's taking things to the extreme. I don't really see the need to remain anonymous in such circumstances, but I suppose it's a bit of sport if someone is so inclined. But I reckon life's too short to get that involved when just ignoring their letters is so simple.

 

[Penners]

Anyone here still using a monochrome television?

As you know, FF, I abhor pedantry.

However, I feel I should point out that the adjective 'monochrome' is a little imprecise in this context. A monochrome image can be rendered from any single colour and is made up of shades of that one colour. Here, for example, is a monochrome picture:


For this reason, I suggest that the BBC's own term, 'black-and-white', is a more accurate description of the picture on an old television (although not necessarily correct as a description of the TV set itself).

I'm sure you will agree that it was important to make this point. :wink:

 

[Flyfisher]

I do indeed agree about the importance of such things, which is why I must apologise for being pedantic about your pedantry. :wink:

Could it be that 'monochrome' a more accurate description than 'black and white' on the basis that the former allows for multiple shades of the 'single colour' whilst the latter implies a 'black or white' image, which would be of extremely high contrast and essentially useless for television purposes?

As for preferably using the BBC's 'own term', in the article I referred to above, Auntie herself seems to be thoroughly confused about the matter:

More than 13,000 households across the UK are still using black-and-white television sets, according to the TV Licensing authority.

London had the highest number of monochrome licences, at 2,715, followed by Birmingham and Manchester, it said.

The number of licences issued each year has dwindled from 212,000 in 2000. A total of 13,202 monochrome licences were in force at the start of 2013.

A black-and-white TV licence costs £49 a year, a colour licence costs £145.50.


Perhaps 'non-colour' television would be a more accurate description, albeit not as snappy. It would, at least, reflect the underlying technology whereby a b&w/monochrome television image was first transmitted as a single 'luminance' signal that varied in brightness only. The colour information was later (and with great technical elegance) added to that same signal in such a way that b&w/monchrome televisions would remain unaffected but that a colour television could decode the additional signal to create its colour display - and all done without a hint of microprocessors or software, even though the digital switchover has now consigned such technology to the dustbin of history.

Oh dear, I seem to have slipped into one of my anoraks. :lol:

 

[LadyArowana]

A lovely anorak you have there Mr F. All this discussion made me wonder if people who are colour blind are allowed a discount on the licence? It would seem fair if they are unable to enjoy the full spectrum :lol:

 

[Penners]

Could it be that 'monochrome' is a more accurate description than 'black and white' on the basis that the former allows for multiple shades of the 'single colour' whilst the latter implies a 'black or white' image

I think I might find it difficult to agree with that view.

Surely "monochrome" simply means "one colour". But a black-and-white TV picture is not just one colour - it's made up of a mixture of black and white, producing many shades of grey. Therefore, I contend, "black-and-white" is actually a much more accurate description.

The rest of you just get on with your homework while FF and I hold this learned debate.

 

[Flyfisher]

:lol:

Hmm. Monochrome as a mixture of pure black and white, or as an infinitely variable intensity of just white? After all 'black' is not really a colour, more an absence of light altogether. And a b&W/monochrome video signal is comprised only of 'luminance' information, corresponding to the varying intensity of 'white' as the image is built up.

But, to be fair, I agree that the 'chrome' component of the word is somewhat imprecise since there is no colour information at all in a b&w/monochrome image.

Could the world of photography help resolve things? After all, it pre-dates video technology and the first photographs were definitely not colour, for much the same reasons that only brightness could be captured at the time. Were these early photographs described as black and white or monochrome?

Photographically, 'B&W' implies something with unrealistically harsh contrast to me - OK for text and line drawings but not at all suitable for what we would think of as a photograph.


What is abundantly clear is that I seem to have too much time on my hands this afternoon.

 

[Penners]

Could the world of photography help resolve things? After all, it pre-dates video technology and the first photographs were definitely not colour

Well now, there's another topic for debate.

I suggest that actually early photographic prints were in colour. Techniques for rendering the full tonal spectrum were not nearly as sophisticated as they are today, so monochrome/B&W prints actually contained no black at all. In addition, the papers used were not nearly as white as today's papers, so true whites were absent, too.

Photographs varied tonally according to the printing technique, but mostly consisted of shades of brown, as much as anything else. Here's an example of a sepia tone photograph (sepia tones were produced by a printing process using cuttlefish ink):

 

[Flyfisher]

All fair comment, though I was thinking more about photographic image capture, i.e. the negative, rather than the printing side of things and the fact that the silver halides used were sensitive to all frequencies of light and therefore effectively captured only the brightness (luminance) information of a scene and nothing to do with colour (in a very analogous way that b&w/monochrome video cameras work. Early prints were certainly sepia, though I'd suggest that's largely an accident of the printing process itself rather than an accurate reproduction of captured colour.

Nevertheless, I concede that 'mono chrome' is a poor description for an image containing no colour, although 'black and white' is hardly much better, which is perhaps why the two are confusingly interspersed in the BBC article that started all this.

Perhaps the great oracle that is Wikipedia can settle the matter once and for all by suggesting that the technically accurate term for a scene constructed only with full-spectrum luminance information is actualy 'greyscale'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome

Meanwhile, I shall be drafting a stiff letter to the Director General of the BBC (whoever that may be this week) complaining about the sloppy and confusing use of these highly technical terms in that website article. Harrumph!

 

[Penners]

I should dearly love to concede that "greyscale" is an effective compromise. However (you knew that was coming, didn't you?!) it really can't be considered as interchangeable with monochrome. Take another look at my flower stall image above and you'll see why.

I'll tell you what - why don't you let me become a joint signatory to your letter to the BBC, and we'll call it a draw? :wink:

 

[Flyfisher]

I may not have explained very clearly. I wasn't suggesting 'greyscale' as a compromise for 'monochrome' but as a better description altogether for 'b&w/monochrome' television and similar images, leaving 'monochrome' to describe images such those you posted by way of example.

It leaves us with the peculiarity that a greyscale photographic negative can be printed as a monochrome image, but that's no more peculiar than early computer monitors having green (or sometimes amber) monochrome displays.

 

[Penners]

Agreed.

If only I had the time to continue this debate today, but I'm afraid I'm washing my hair. :wink:

 

[Owain]

Agreed.

If only I had the time to continue this debate today, but I'm afraid I'm washing my hair. :wink:

both of them?

 

[Penners]

If I had meant both of them, I would have said "hairs". So it'll just be the one.

 

[Flyfisher]

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Can't out-pedant Penners!