Woah...being Australian I have never heard of a tv licensing fee, the things you learn on the internet.
TV licensing puzzles me.
- Thread starter Jory
- Start date
sounds retarded to me... but if you are paying them, then they have no reason to *****... ingore them
Jory said:
.....uhm, I live in America so I never heard of this before. Are you all saying that in the UK you have to PAY to watch tv, regardless of how you get it?
As far as I know, the license fee (supposedly) pays for all of the BBC Stations. Though you don't have to pay for Channel 4 or ITV once you have the license.DemonicKitten said:
However, the reality is that you are paying just for the privilege of being allowed to watch basic TV. It works in the same way as X-box Live. You have to pay the subscription fee just to get access to Live, and then you have to pay for any DLC (or other stations) on top of that.
But I think you can get a Freeview box if you live in Britain which should give you a few more channels. (Be sure to ask in a supermarket / Dixons / Currys.)
Ha ha ha ha ha, oh man, that is hilarious. Thanks internet! Now whenever I bemoan America's ass-backwards broadband service, I'll have the consolation that at least we don't make our citizenry pay for "the ability to receive television broadcast signals, even if it's just over the internet". Cable or satellite, sure, but broadcast? Next you'll tell me you have a radio license fee, can't have the citizenry operating car stereos without a license!
[small]Oh man will I be laughing if you do in fact have one of those too.[/small]
[small]Oh man will I be laughing if you do in fact have one of those too.[/small]
OP: We have something similar in germany and "agents" that act similar. Though we don't get to phone on a costly telephone number, the "agents" get info if someone moves in somewhere and the local "agent" visits you. He usually tries to enter (they generally have no warrant, so you never have to let them in) to have a look if there is a radio or TV and tells horror stories what can happen if you don't tell the truth about your TV/Radio equipment.
Thing is, they tell you very often that just having a TV requires you to pay for having it. Because you have the equipment, so in the future you _could_ use it to look the very few TV Channels that finance themselves through the fee.
Someone some time ago said the following about this: "Hey, you get money from social agencies in germany for having a (or more) child (to help you). You have to apply for it, though. So I just apply for 'Children Money' (Kindergeld) even if my girlfriend and I don't have one. But we have the equipment to produce one in the future."
Edit: Germany does have indeed a fee for radios. See, we are _this_ progressive. ^^
And the Stations for we would have to pay the radio and TV fee are very few. It's a little sad, really.
Thing is, they tell you very often that just having a TV requires you to pay for having it. Because you have the equipment, so in the future you _could_ use it to look the very few TV Channels that finance themselves through the fee.
Someone some time ago said the following about this: "Hey, you get money from social agencies in germany for having a (or more) child (to help you). You have to apply for it, though. So I just apply for 'Children Money' (Kindergeld) even if my girlfriend and I don't have one. But we have the equipment to produce one in the future."
Edit: Germany does have indeed a fee for radios. See, we are _this_ progressive. ^^
And the Stations for we would have to pay the radio and TV fee are very few. It's a little sad, really.
The law is that if I own a TV with the intention of watching broadcasts then I have to own a license. There is nothing illegal about me owning a television to watch DVDs or play on my 360 without a license.KingsGambit said:
Besides, the whole "if you're capable of doing it" point is arguable. I'm capable of killing, stealing, raping and drug abuse but that is not grounds for me to be arrested without reasonable belief that I am, in fact, a criminal. I was always under the impression that the legal system works under a philosophy of "Innocent until proven guilty". Was I misinformed?
But that License goes to towards paying for Tv shows whihc can only be seen on the BBC(some of which are excellent) advert free TV, radio, news and online media player.Gildan Bladeborn said:
Its not just some random license you have to pay just to own a TV, you do see benefit from it. You have no idea how nice it is to not have to put up with shitty adverts every 15 minutes.
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/
"If you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV you must, by law, be covered by a TV Licence, no matter what device you're using."
So the fact that I have a TV, PS3 and laptop doesn't matter, it's only if I want to watch/record someting as it is being shown. Watching last week's episode of whatever on the BBC iplayer is fine since it is not live.
By to way to someone who asked if we have a "Radio Licence" well we used to before TVs and someone once told me if you don't have a TV but a radio then you need a radio licence but I don't think it is true/still applied.
"If you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV you must, by law, be covered by a TV Licence, no matter what device you're using."
So the fact that I have a TV, PS3 and laptop doesn't matter, it's only if I want to watch/record someting as it is being shown. Watching last week's episode of whatever on the BBC iplayer is fine since it is not live.
By to way to someone who asked if we have a "Radio Licence" well we used to before TVs and someone once told me if you don't have a TV but a radio then you need a radio licence but I don't think it is true/still applied.
Trouble is, if you even have a laptop with an internet connection you need a TV License unless you can prove conclusively that you don't use it for things like BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Sky On Demand, ITV Player, etc. I found that out last year when living in university accomodation for my first year. Fortunately, my dad got me a TV License for the year so it was fine. That said, since one of my friends stuck his TV in the kitchen/common area for us all to share during semester two, we started getting nasty letters about it. Not that the license people ever bothered to check. I think they just send them out to intimidate you and then if you don't have one, there's nothing they can actually do without a series of letters warning you and/or a court order/search warrant.Jory said:
This year I'm living with those same people in a house near campus, and we all chipped in right at the start of the year for a shared TV License. We only need one for the house no matter how many TVs we have (considering there's one in the main room, one in the basement lounge, and then before we got burgled everyone had at least one somewhere in the house, that's well over ten TVs altogether). And we still got stupid thening leers from the Licensing people about it. We ended up on the phone to them telling them to check their bloody records again, and we had no more word from them. They're just scaremongers trying to profit from people.
Then again, the TV License isn't all bad. It funds the BBC after all, which nowadays seems to be the only terrestrial channel with anything good (compare plenty of great BBC programming to the stuff we get from ITV, which is only good sometimes, Channel 4, which just has a few quality shows like it's comedy or stuff like Skins and Hollyoaks, and then Channel Five, which is just plain shit...).
Actually I do, because (and this is key here) nobody actually watches live television here anymore - if you tell somebody you watch live TV where I live we will look at you funny and then ask why you don't have a DVR. Because we all have those - commercial breaks last for only as long as it takes me to press the skip forward button until the show is back on, without so much as an annoying jingle to be heard. Plus I don't have to sit down while shows are actually airing, and if I ever do want to for some inexplicable reason watch a show live that I don't have set up to record, I can just press the pause button, go do something else for a while, and come back whenever I like because the DVR lets me pause live TV.johnman said:
DVRs totally rock. Also the figures I'm seeing bandied about are suggesting you pay more for broadcast television than I'm paying for my broadband and cable service combined.
As bad as the US government can be at times, they know better than to try to impose such a fee on the people. Paying for TV is what commercial advertisements are for, live or otherwise.
...Jory said:
I... that... wow. I mention charging license fees for the privilege of owning a device that can translate all those radio signals scurrying about into sound specifically because I thought it was too ridiculous to possibly be real a real thing anyone would ever do, and you're telling me your government actually did that at one point.
I'm holding you medically responsible when I laugh myself into a coma!
yeah and then to add insult to injury if you want to watch non-terestial (I can't spell alright) channels you than have to pay their subscription fees on top. Its little more than a government enforced protection racket and personally I feel they should scrap it.Scikosomatic said:
I'm a bit naive here, being American and not British (and I knew about the TV license, yay for The Young Ones!), but aren't there laws against harassment that apply? In the US, even if you do owe a company money, there are certain things they are not allowed to do (though they do try them when they can get away with them) such as calling your employer, threatening to repossess things they don't have a right to, etc. It strikes me that there should be some law against arbitrarily sending out letters demanding money for a service that you probably are not receiving. It would be like the Department of Motor Vehicles calling me up and threatening to have me arrested for driving without a license, regardless of whether I own a car and drive or not. Isn't there a Better Business Bureau or equivalent you can go to to get help with this?