And lo On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:14:23 -0000, Jim Henderson
<nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake thusly:

> On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:02:22 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>> In the UK, everybody who owns a TV has to pay money to the BBC. The BBC
>> therefore has no incentive at all to ever show anything. (Well, except I
>> suppose that if they stopped broadcasting, the government wouldn't be
>> too amused about it...) In general, the BBC used to produce some pretty
>> high-quality stuff. (They also have fewER adverts.) Today, even the BBC
>> is being diluted across too many channels.
>>
>> I just don't watch TV any more. :-P
>>
>> Let's face it, watching TV adverts is like a bad acid trip.
>>
>> PS. In theory if you don't own a TV you don't have to pay for a TV
>> license. In reality, *everybody* has to pay. If you so much as own a
>> toaster which contains a CPU with is hypothetically powerful enough to
>> run a TCP/IP stack, they will argue that you could mod your toaster to
>> watch TV, so you need a TV license.
>
> 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.

> 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

> 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.

> 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.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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