[fredoralive]

Just as a slight extension to this, in the UK VHF was used for the original 405 line (~376i) analogue TV system used for 1936-39 and then 1946 until it turned off in the 1980s, so any ariels still up probably haven't been used for decades.

UHF was used for the newer 625 line (576i) PAL colour TV system, starting in 1964 with the launch of BBC2 (colour in 1967) and then BBC1 and ITV in 1969 when they went into colour. Analogue TV was switched off in 2012, and digital TV is only UHF only.

BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting) was a failed satellite TV service notably using a smaller square dish compared to their rival Sky (old Sky analogue dishes were quite bigger than the "minidish" used for digital, and you don't see them around much either). They also used the fairly obscure DMAC TV system, whilst Sky used standard PAL. The pretty quickly "merged" with Sky, hence Sky's legal name for a long time was British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB).

[ErroneousBosh]

There are actually existing copies of 405-line TV programmes on tape, because domestic VCRs would quite happily record it. Each "stripe" of a head rotation is a complete field, and as long as they're coming every 1/50th of a second it doesn't really care what if any line sync pulses you want to feed it.

I don't remember us having 405-line TV because by the time they built out transmitters that far north in the early 70s there was no point, but I remember going round to a neighbour's house down south with my dad in the late 70s when they asked him to repair their TV. I remember the objectionably loud 10kHz line whistle which my elderly neighbours just couldn't hear :-)