There are still 13,000 homes in Britain with black-and-white TVs

There are still 13,000 homes in Britain watching a black and white television, 46 years after the arrival of colour, new figures have revealed.

The numbers from the TV Licensing authority show that despite new technologies such as colour, high-definition, 3D and more recently the digital switchover, there are still 13,000 of the old-style licences in force across the UK.

But the numbers are declining. In 2000, there were 212,000 black and white TV Licences issued but by 2003 that had shrunk to 93,000 and in 2006 it was less than 50,000.

[Related: Glowing LED ice cubes warn drinkers when they've had too much]

London has the highest of the users with 2,715 paying £49 for the licence, compared to nearly £150 for a colour one.

Birmingham comes next in the top 10 black and white TV cities followed by Manchester.

Stephen Farmer, spokesperson for TV Licensing, said: "It's remarkable that with the digital switchover complete, 41 per cent of UK households owning HDTVs and Britons leading the world in accessing TV content over the internet, more than 13,000 households still watch their favourite programmes on a black and white telly."
 
John Trenouth, a Television and Radio Technology Historian, added:  "Although 13,202 monochrome licences may sound a lot, it's now a tiny percentage of the 25 million licensed viewers in the UK. The numbers of black and white TV sets in regular use has fallen dramatically over the last few years, hastened by the fact that it's now almost impossible to replace them and by the need to buy a suitable set top box to continue to use them after digital switchover."
 
"There will always be a small number of users who prefer monochrome images, don't want to throw away a working piece of technology or collect old TV sets."

"Maybe these will still be around in 10 years from now when the number of black and white licences will have fallen to a few hundred - about the same number of black and white sets that were in use on the opening night of BBC television 70 years ago."