Still 6000 B&W licences

[Richard_FM]

I suspect most of these B&W licence holders are watching colour screens.

I don't think anyone knows.

Here in Ireland they simply abolished the cheaper B&W licence.  Long before the 2012 Analogue switch off.

According to a Dutch member of another site, licences in the Netherlands don't have a reduction for monochrome, with the effect that it's hard to find any later black & white sets over there.

I presume people switched quickly to colour over there once sets became cheaper to buy & larger B&W ones stopped being made.

I remember reading on Facebook (I think) that someone knew a family who kept a 1500 or 1600 series Ferguson as their main set until the mid 1990s, as the woman of the house refused to switch to colour.

[Amie]

Amie, this is very interesting. A hint of some real evidence of people watching in B&W. Or perhaps on older colour sets that didn't have AV inputs.

Only one definite example of a non enthusiast still owning B/W only that I know of is an elderly lady who lives in the village where dad grew up. from that time, she purchased a new GEC 24" 625 set that she still has, claiming to only watch the news and the odd film. Dad repaired it for her a few times, and described it as "triggers broom", and never very reliable.

The lady is now in her nineties and I believe still uses it with freeview and one of the modulator boxes, she told me a couple of years ago that it was the only TV they ever owned, and they bought it the year dad was eight!....making the set 47 years old.

There was some media interest with her too some while ago, because she was being pestered about the licence, but she says she got fed up with the fool questions, and people trampling the carpet!

Amie

[colly0410]

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere about decolourised TV sets that some coin meter rental firms rented out, they were colour sets that had the 4.43 Mhz sub-carrier crystal removed so they could only show a black & white picture so a cheaper licence. They had a certificate to show the BBC cops if they turned up wanting to know why no colour licence...

[Richard_FM]

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere about decolourised TV sets that some coin meter rental firms rented out, they were colour sets that had the 4.43 Mhz sub-carrier crystal removed so they could only show a black & white picture so a cheaper licence. They had a certificate to show the BBC cops if they turned up wanting to know why no colour licence...

https://www.transdiffusion.org/2004/01/01/rentals

This is an interesting read, that mentions TV rentals, the British Relay cable system & de-coloured sets among other things.

[BusyBee]

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere about decolourised TV sets that some coin meter rental firms rented out, they were colour sets that had the 4.43 Mhz sub-carrier crystal removed so they could only show a black & white picture so a cheaper licence. They had a certificate to show the BBC cops if they turned up wanting to know why no colour licence...

That was done but it did not need anything as extreme as the crystal removed. A company I knew enquired with the authorities and just had to permanently disable colour (as far as the customer was concerned). It was done as there was a relative shortage of black and whte sets and abundance of colour as, I think, the rental market was diminishing.

(apologies to Richard as the article explains much - The company I am on about was small local)

Tracy

[BusyBee]

This does have me thinking as, although I don't remember details even if I originally knew them, but theoretically a modern set (digital) could be set to black and white? Does the colour killer circuit still exist (as digitally things may be very different) and if so could it be utilised? Pretty hypothetical I suppose but I am always thinking of possibilities.

Tracy

[Mike Watterson]

Only in a fake way.
Analogue TV on all commercial broadcast systems, that is NTSC, various PAL, various SECAM, had a backward compatible monochrome signal that worked mono sets. The extra information for colour was transmitted on a separate carrier at lower resolution. None used R G B. All used variations of Red - Monochrome and Blue - Monochrome. NTSC and PAL transmitted these simultaneously in quadrature, which meant the resultant vector was the hue and magnitude was the saturation. SECAM transmitted them sequentially using a delay line to combine them as full vertical resolution wasn't needed. Some SECAM used FM and some AM or DSBSC, I'm not sure. Component Video and S-Video are both related to how Analogue TV works. Video tape was originally only monochrome and most video systems took the separate colour subcarriers and transposed them to a lower frequency than the FM carrier used. All transverse and helical video systems recorded monochrome on an FM carrier as the amplitude variation is severe. The added colour is mostly via "Colour under".

Digital TV unfortunately uses MORE systems than Analogue, to encode the R G B data, to serialize it, do error correction and the modulation systems. However as there was no need to have backward compatibility, there are no separate colouring and monochrome streams. Some digital systems may have lower colour resolution than luminance, hence specs like 4:2:2.
There isn't a point in a digital TV set circuit board that has separate monochrome (luminance) and colour (chrominance). Obviously it would be trivial to have a monochrome display.

Most countries simply abolish a discount for B&W. Here in Ireland the TV licence is free for over 65.

Also many countries don't have a TV licence. They are either commercial with a shoestring public broadcaster (USA), or Dictatorships with only State TV (not Public Service Broadcasting). You might need a permit for a satellite TV reception system!

So it's moot. Does anywhere other than UK still have a B&W discount and why does it still exist in UK?

[Terry]

Even in a digital TV, the separate R, G & B signals exist to drive the display so it would be possible to interrupt them, combine them 59% G, 30% R, 11% B to derive the luminance signal then use that to drive the display.

There is, of course, no way of stopping a DTV recorder from recording in colour!

[Mike Watterson]

Even in a digital TV, the separate R, G & B signals exist to drive the display so it would be possible to interrupt them, combine them 59% G, 30% R, 11% B to derive the luminance signal then use that to drive the display.

The signals are digital and need not be related to the serial data in HDMI or DVI or Display port signals. Probably easier to hack the firmware!

Laptops nowadays have a more standardised interface to the display panel.

In either case an FPGA inserted between the panel connectors and the video board connectors would be simplest design.
Also not all digital transmissions or content is 59% G, 30% R, 11% B = Luminance. The actual panel might use equal R G B. It's actually likely the video decoder scales the R G B for an output that is unweighted as USA, Europe and Professional satellite distributions at least have different weightings. Though I don't know if my HD sat decoder or my TV with dual sat tuners can decode 4:2:2 feeds. Both can control my 12 way distribution with 4 satellite feed (diseqc) and the box can control my motorised dish. I've not examined if the TV can.
The downstairs TV has no sat, it uses a Humax box which has dual Freesat and non-Freesat modes, thus all the UK stuff works and with an arcane menu selection, the other three satellites, but then only manual recording for some bizarre reason that Humax have. Perhaps they pretended to the Freesat certification people that it only does Freesat.

Then HMDI has at least two colour modes supported on the 4K TV. I think one has more than 8 bits per R G B. The only thing I found that has it was a test transmission on Astra 19.2, that was also 4K.
One computer and one laptop will do the 4K mode, but only at 24fps progressive. I suspect it's a cheap 4K model as both GPUs are alleged to do at least 4K @ 60 fps, or I'm holding something wrong!

My grandkids play Minecraft 4K@60fps on 55" at about 1.5m distance. If you've seen Minecraft you'll wonder at the waste of technology. Looks like original VGA on a pub projector.

I don't see a market for converting digital TVs to monochrome.

[Richard_FM]

On my Samsiug Smart TV it's possible to turn the colour level down to zero, if there was a way to dummy out that part of the menu, like how some sets can be put into a hotel mode.