Actually no, I believe it's a licence to recieve,
not to view, which is
why when you could still get a black and white licence at a cheaper
price than colour, you still needed a colour license even if you had a
black and white TV, if you also had a video recorder. The reason being
that the video recorder could recieve and record a colour signal, even
though you could only view it in black and white.
I wonder if that's acutally true. The TV licensing people couldn't tell
me what license would be required for a monochrome-only video recorder
(such things exist, I have one. It's a Sony reel-to-reel machine...). Or
for a video recorder that had been modified to record only in monochrome
(for example a Philips N1500 with the colour-killer switch hard wired in
the appropriate state).
Mind you, they also didn't know what, if any, licesnse is required for a
TV sound-only receiver. Or for a teletext-only receiver (such as the
units used with the BBC micro). For such devices, does 'colour' mean it
uses a colour monitor, or that it decodes the attribute bytes, or what?
The did tell me that if I modified a TV receiver so that it no longer
received TV, then it diddn't need a license. If I took a TV set,
desoldered the tuner module, and used the rest of it as a monitor, then I
didn't need a license. Even if I kepty the tuner module in my spares box.
The fact I had parts that could be assembled into a TV set did not mean I
had a TV set.
Many years ago I assembled the Maplin NICAM TV tuner kits. I bought said
kits in one of their shops (back when Maplin shops stocked interesting
items), and they didn't take my name or address. I was told that although
a lincense was needed to use the assembled kit, there was no license
check in buying a box of parts. The parts were not a TV receiver, they
could be used for all sorts of other things.
FWIW, all the above devies are used in a house that has a valid TV
license, so it didn;t really matter. Byt as=king annoying questions is a
hobby of mine...
-tony