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

Just shows that even today, TV content degrades gracefully onto the oldest available technology.

I have this notion of the sort of people who think, 'Oh fcuk, I just couldn't deal with salespeople again!'

I thought they had switched off the analogue TV signal so how the hell are the B&W sets working?

+1. The only way they would still work is if they were connected to a freeview box or similar. Or they're not used for watching tv anymore but the tvla have scared them witless with their messages/reminders that they feel they still need to pay a license for possessing one.

I suspect that they may be used for other purposes but unless you go to the expense of crippling them so that they cannot receive a TV signal you are still liable for a TV license.

Either in use for CCTV or maybe they've got freeview boxes like I used to have with an aerial out on them.

TBH the fact they cannot receive a freeview signal should suffice. They might pop round to check and IMO that should be adequate. How many modern TVs with built in freeview are B&W?

But since the freeview box receives signal in colour, surely they should have a colour license?

??? It wasn't as if the old analogue TV had separate signals for B&W and colour? Why should freeview be any different?

Given that you need a TV license if you only have a TV receiving device (e.g. you could have had a VHS recorder and a monitor to watch the recorded tapes on but only with a license), it would make sense that if you had equipment that was capable of receiving colour signal to still pay for the full license, because a normal monitor could be used to watch recorded colour TV.

Though I'd have thought the black and white license should be scrapped. Presumably it was cheaper because it was a simpler signal to broadcast? Given that the only signal broadcast now is colour, the BBC aren't saving any money...

There was never a B&W specific signal broadcast.
The limitation was imposed by the hardware - a bit like having superfast broadband available to your door, but you elect to use a 56k modem to access the web (if you could sign up for such a service). Why be charged for the full fat service when your hardware only delivers a portion of what's offered?
Or that was the thinking, I believe.

There's some serious [LIFTED] in this thread which needs correcting.

Just owning a television or VCR is not sufficient to be liable for a TV licence, you have to he watching or recording TV while it's being broadcast. It's up to the TVLA to prove it too, you don't have to prove you aren't.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

I imagine it was a simple case allowing "poorer people" to enjoy a limited experience at a lower cost.

I suspect many of those licences are fraudulent. I know it wasn't uncommon in the past to pay the lower amount to keep them off your back, while actually having colour.

I think they were going to stop it a few years ago, but I guess there was such an outcry about all the poor people who still couldn't afford colour sets that it wasn't worth arguing about. After all, it's less than 1% of the revenue.

Yes but there are people with black and white tellies. It might be a way around the license fee by keeping a black and white TV but using a colour TV and only paying the black and white license fee.