[gs17]

It sounds weirder than that to me:

> colour TV: £169.50 per year; monochrome TV: £57.00 per year; blind people: 50% discount

People who can't see their color TV at all pay more than people who can but have an old black-and-white one?

[soneil]

People who can’t see their colour TV pay more than people who can’t see their B&W TV.

Oh to be a a fly on the wall when the inspector has to explain the difference to a blind person.

I think it made a lot more sense in the past. The license is set up so it’s a consumption based tax rather than taxing everyone. So only people with TVs paid TV tax. If colour increased the costs, only people consuming colour paid those increases. I imagine it made much more sense before consumption was ubiquitous

[rescbr]

A novelty product opportunity: plug together a Raspberry Pi, an USB TV tuner and a BW LCD display to pay a smaller TV licence.

[chihuahua]

When I lived in Britain in 1989-1992, at the time the rule was that battery-powered TVs were exempt from the license fees. I had a tiny TV that could be powered by 6 AA batteries. The screen size was approximately 3 inches / 7.5cm.

I don't know if the rules have changed since then, but if they are the same, then a battery-powered laptop would also be exempt (even in color.)

[Ellipsis753]

Weirder still, the discounts stack! So blind people can benefit from buying a black-and-white TV for an additional discount.

I've given this a lot of thought in the past. The best I could come up with is that "legally blind" could still allow for someone with _very poor_ (colour) vision...

[madeofpalk]

Do the discounts stack? If you’re blind should you just buy a monochrome tv and pay £28?

[account42]

On the other hand you might end up paying quite a bit more for a monochrome tv than for the cheapest color tv you can find.

[chihuahua]

Maybe you can just turn down the color setting to 0, and break off the knob.

[Xophmeister]

Since the switch to digital, presumably there’s no longer and signal for B&W TVs.

[manarth]

There has rarely (if ever) been a separate broadcast signal for B&W vs colour. Broadcasts began in B&W, over time upgraded to colour, but there wasn't a need to broadcast Channel <whatever> in B&W and broadcast the same channel in colour on a different frequency.

One single broadcast signal, and different capabilities of receivers.

[Xophmeister]

But surely B&W TVs only exist with analog tuners?

[manarth]

Oh, I misunderstood the point you were making.

I guess you _could_ have a modern digital receiver with SCART-out (if such a thing exists) to a B&W TV. This BBC article (2018) claims 7,000 people watching TV with a B&W licence – whether they were actually watching it in B&W is not known :-D

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46125741

[dom96]

this is making me want to buy a black and white TV (or grab a monitor and set it to always show in black and white) just so I can buy the monochrome TV license for giggles

[TheRealPomax]

That's... not what https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/tv-licence says at all.

If you're blind, you almost certainly qualify for a free license.

[giobox]

No, it really does say this. There is expressly no free TV licence for being blind, instead a 50% discount.

https://www.gov.uk/free-discount-tv-licence

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/for-your...