Hundreds in Scotland still have black and white TV
84 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;49432823]The bigger problem with our TV license is RTE makes one good show every 5 years and the rest of the time it's just the same shit made over and over.[/QUOTE]
"HEY DID YOU KNOW DUBLIN HUMOUR EXISTS?
HERE'S A JOKE THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE/IS INCREDIBLY UNFUNNY TO SOMEONE OUTSIDE OF DUBLIN!".
Outside of foreign shows, RTE is pretty much just RTE News and terrible Irish-made shows "comedy" shows.
TV license is quite a misnomer (or come to think of it maybe it is not if you consider what television literally means). You need to pay a certain amount if you want to watch live broadcasting, no matter in what form (this includes streams over internet as well and I believe stuff like illegal sports streams and so forth). You do not have to pay squat if you are only using catch-up services or streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Video etc...
As far as I know it is quite hard to get busted for not having a TV license though. It might just be uni rumours of course but you do not have to allow the inspector (or whoever it is) in to your home and it is quite difficult to prove you are watching live broadcasts.
Honestly I don't watch live TV so I don't pay for a TV license, but I don't see any problem with it as long as it is used to keep BBC free of ads and going to make weird and quirky shows/documentaries other commercial channels wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole because of financial concerns.
Most countries with public broadcasting services fund themselves through taxpayer money, it is included in your cable bill, electricity bill or something else in one way or the other, and they still air ads. I feel like most people here have an issue because the TV license is a separate lump sum but over the course of the year you still pay for the public channels (except maybe the US but honestly that is another matter entirely).
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;49432823]The bigger problem with our TV license is RTE makes one good show every 5 years and the rest of the time it's just the same shit made over and over.[/QUOTE]
I can't watch RTE at all, it's so bad
Literally any other channel is more entertaining
US TV is stupid. It's killing itself with ads and greed. Not only do I have to watch what they decide to put on, I have to watch it when they decide to show it, and then for every 60 minutes, 17 to 20 are commercials that interrupt the show.
Some channels go beyond THAT even, like TBS, Who delete a single frame every second, which gives an extra 30 seconds over a 30 minute block for more ad time. And I think that's on top of speeding the show up by a couple % for an additional 30 seconds
Ah, the TV license. Here it is in simple terms for those of your outside the UK:
If you own a TV and watch [B]live broadcast[/B] television, you are required to have a TV license. This applies per household, so you can have as many TVs as you like under one license. The license fee goes towards the BBC, which produces adfree entertainment and (largely) unbiased news.
If you own a TV but don't watch live television, and instead only use it for catchup services, DVDs, or games, you are not required to have a TV license.
These rules ostensibly apply to watching live television on a PC, phone, or tablet, however as far as I'm aware there is no way for the TV licensing agency to enforce them.
Here private TV channels cut the credits, so you often don't even know if the show is completely over or they are just showing ads again. The newest thing is placing a 5 minute add block during the evening news. Publicly funded channels have less ads, some don't have any, and they usually don't show any ads during the whole show or movie.
Be interesting to see how they do this if even a few are genuine. 405 line TV sets need a converter to see any sort of content these days due to the signal being switched off 30 years ago and it proceeding the days of devices that can be plugged into it like a VCR, home computer or console. Many sets require extensive restoration due to components gone bad (And probably will need doing so again in the future) and many of them seem to rely on vacuum tubes.
625 line B&W sets maybe easier to get going as it was the basis for using PAL colour and has the benefit of being higher resolution. Simply finding a Freeview box with an analogue output will be enough however the TV set will still probably need restoration due to age and it maybe difficult to find a compatible set due to how the roll out of 625 line TV went along.
[QUOTE=Shalaska;49433030]"HEY DID YOU KNOW DUBLIN HUMOUR EXISTS?
HERE'S A JOKE THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE/IS INCREDIBLY UNFUNNY TO SOMEONE OUTSIDE OF DUBLIN!".
Outside of foreign shows, RTE is pretty much just RTE News and terrible Irish-made shows "comedy" shows.[/QUOTE]
It's not Dublin humour, no one in Dublin likes that shit either.
[QUOTE=freaka;49432650]we have tv license in sweden aswell, but im not paying for it. They cant go into your house and demand you to pay for it. Saying something as simple as "I dont have a tv" works and then they leave.[/QUOTE]
The TV license guys can be really irritating though, watching trough your windows and shit. We had a borderline militant one at my brothers house a while back who kept saying he could legally go into my brothers yard and see the TV. My brother just called out his doberman into the yard and said "you're welcome to try".
I still find it funny people watch regular TV.
I haven't for about 2 years now. I don't get live TV or newly released episodes, but I haven't seen an ad in so long.
The other day at a Christmas party, I saw a few ads on the TV. Reminded me about how much I hated them. And how half of them were related to Star Wars.
I just can't see why the UK doesn't do an Australian-Canadian approach and have the national broadcaster (or broadcasters because Australia has ABC and SBS) into the federal budget where taxpayers pay for it regardless
You still don't get government interference, they don't have ads (except for CBC(?) and SBS (mind you, theres a limit to how many they can display) and they're free-to-air
Scottish people still tend to see things in black and white vision, so why would they use a colour TV?
[QUOTE=Antlerp;49433716]Scottish people still tend to see things in black and white vision, so why would they use a colour TV?[/QUOTE]
Nah mate
This is a complete non story no idea why it singles Scotland out. TV licences cost next to nothing and you don't really have to pay them. You just get angry letters and if they come to your door just don't let them in or tell them you don't have a TV. It isn't a deal at all.
[QUOTE=Ntag;49433810]Nah mate
This is a complete non story no idea why it singles Scotland out. TV licences cost next to nothing and you don't really have to pay them.
You just get angry letters and if they come to your door just don't let them in or tell them you don't have a TV. It isn't a deal at all.[/QUOTE]
Got one sitting on my kitchen counter right now, where it will remain until they send someone over.
When I lived in student dorms like ... 7 years ago, the whole TV license thing was the boogeyman.
I ended up shelling out £40+ for the first couple of months, even though the TV we owned was in the communal kitchen with no TV cable / aerial.
(I didn't know any better, pretty sure scare tactics were used)
But being a poor student forced me to call the licencing company and tell them I'd been paying for a TV licence without actually watching TV before, and they set me a fuckin' cheque with the full amount I'd paid back to me!
It ain't so bad.
For the qualiy of the BBC the ammount you pay for a TV license is nothing. Its barely anything anyway. People will only realise how good the deal is if it goes
[QUOTE=Tamschi;49432955]In Germany there's a combined TV/Radio license (and you also need one if you have a [b]car radio[/b], internet radio, or internet-connected computer),[/QUOTE]
Ridiculous. Those have been standard on cars for forty or fifty years now, and available on them since the 1930s.
I'm glad there's no fees here. I picked up an HD Antenna from Goodwill and got 20 channels in Indianapolis for free.
The TV licence is the reason why if you download a British program it's 58~ minutes long instead of 44~ minutes long; because we don't have any adverts.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;49432443]Oh holy shit I just read this fucking bullshit. There's a fucking national database of people who own TVs? Oh [I]wow.[/I] Then they'll send somebody to your door apparently to check to see if you're watching TV or not, and patrol around your house with "detector vans" that can "detect the use of TV receiving equipment at specifically targeted addresses within minutes."[/quote]
there aren't such a thing as "detector vans" lmao
you're literally making shit up
[QUOTE=freaka;49432650]we have tv license in sweden aswell, but im not paying for it. They cant go into your house and demand you to pay for it. Saying something as simple as "I dont have a tv" works and then they leave.[/QUOTE]
and PC's aren't applicable for the tax afaik over here
nobody ever gets prosecuted, loads of students flout the law on it
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49433971]there aren't such a thing as "detector vans" lmao
you're literally making shit up[/QUOTE]
They never really existed in any useable form, but they were said to exist and even appeared in public information films made to scare people into paying. [media]http://youtu.be/dqwbrX8uhEE[/media]
[QUOTE=codenamecueball;49434000]nobody ever gets prosecuted, loads of students flout the law on it[/QUOTE]
Then why have it?
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49433971]there aren't such a thing as "detector vans" lmao
you're literally making shit up[/QUOTE]
Nah, they probably aren't in use, and wouldn't have much functionality if they were, but the TV Licensing folks used to talk a lot about their magic detector vans that could see through your walls to detect signals or some such shite.
[QUOTE=verynicelady;49434007]They never really existed in any useable form, but they were said to exist and even appeared in public information films made to scare people into paying. [media]http://youtu.be/dqwbrX8uhEE[/media][/QUOTE]
it's pretty much a PR stunt to convince idiots into thinking it
there's been loads of freedom of information requests into the BBC, and they eventually sheepishly admitted that the vans weren't even used to track peoples tellys and that they didn't have any currently in operation
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;49434008]Then why have it?[/QUOTE]
because lots of law abiding citizens, such as my parents, have no problem paying it
My nan had a black and white TV for years, the old boys here just have a mentality of waste not, want not. TV's are quite cheap, so buying a coloured one isn't really a problem, just people set in their ways.
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;49432309]I love seeing obsolete appliances still being used to this day. But Jesus, that TV license is ridiculous.
Is it true that you don't need one if the TV won't be used for watching cable?[/QUOTE]
Most European countries have a tv license, which exists as funding for state TV as a way to depolitise it. Think of the NPR. The BBC gets funding trough that for instance.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;49432781]Doesn't NPR get taxpayer money[/QUOTE]
its like 1-5% of their meager budget, and the republicans are always threatening to axe that, its so unreliable they don't even include it in their operational costs
they like PBS are funded mainly by donation
[QUOTE=fruxodaily;49433705]I just can't see why the UK doesn't do an Australian-Canadian approach and have the national broadcaster (or broadcasters because Australia has ABC and SBS) into the federal budget where taxpayers pay for it regardless
You still don't get government interference, they don't have ads (except for CBC(?) and SBS (mind you, theres a limit to how many they can display) and they're free-to-air[/QUOTE]
Trying to change anything about the BBC at the moment would be met with the Tories trying to bin/privatise the whole thing unfortunately.
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