On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:31:41 +0000, Phil Cook v2 wrote:

>> Well, arguing about the TV license fee in the UK is something of a
>> national pastime.  (As you probably know, the funding it also goes to
>> pay for BBC radio, which doesn't charge a license fee, and for the BBC
>> website - outside the UK, we see ads unless using ad blocking software)
> 
> Used to be a Radio License then a Radio and Television Licence; in
> reality it's a license to receive broadcasts and the radio bit's been
> dropped.
> 
> That's kind of like what Orphi was saying about if you have a tuner in
> your toaster, it's up to you to prove that you're not receiving
> broadcasts if you have the ability to do so. Of course this obviously
> applied to computers with tuners in them; and now you don't even need
> that to watch them online as the license applies to watching television
> that has been broadcast even if you're not watching it via a broadcast
> medium.
> 
> In theory simply owning a computer connected to the internet could mean
> you require a license; in practice it can be a hassle to prove.

Yep - and it is difficult to prove that it's being used that way, unless 
of course you start tracking IP address assignments, which starts to get 
into privacy issues.

>> Comparatively speaking, though, the amount you pay for your TV license
>> is far less than Cable TV costs in the US - so for me, my reaction is
>> kinda like most UK residents' reactions to US people complaining about
>> the price of petrol.
>>
>> You pay 142.50 GBP per year (about $210 at current exchange rates).
>>
>> For Comcast basic+digital cable, that covers only about 2.5 months
>> worth of service (our cable bill is about $100/month, without any
>> premium channels.
> 
> Ah but you have a choice of cable companies, we don't. Competition
> should keep the prices down...lol

And yet it doesn't.  Greed keeps prices up, and causes them to increase.

>> What's more, most of what we watch originates in the UK on the BBC. 
>> We'd happily pay $214/year for what we watch, rather than damn near
>> *$1,200* a year.
> 
> And you get the joy of watching adverts too.

Yep.  Well, unless we record and skip them, which is what we do.

>> Just like you'd rather pay 0.49 GPB/litre (the cost our gas station
>> down the block is charging for 87 octane right now) instead of 1.14
>> GBP/l (the reported average in the UK right now).
> 
> I drive past a station on the way to work and watched it go from 110.9p
> to 114.9p over a couple of weeks.

Yeah, I pulled the pricing for the UK from a UK site that tracks petrol 
prices.

Jim

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