TV licence man came round!
- Thread starter _Jimlad_
- Start date
More likely it would be:
Sky + £480 or more.
Installation and box £129 one off payment.
Other packages and options like multiroom or HD extra.
90% of what they offer is absolute junk.
So, people moan about the BBC but are happy to pay a minimum of 4 times as much for a station containing 90% junk and LOADS of adverts ...... I see.
I'm no fan of the TV license fee but I fail to understand why anyone would be happy to pay huge fees per month (mine were £60+ MONTH for the full package when I had it) for Sky crap and then complain about £150 a YEAR for the free to air (inc BBC) stuff.
It's not just the bbc though.
TV gets the largest percentage at 67.58%, with network radio the next largest at 10.45%. The next largest chunk, 9.30%, gets spent on transmission and licence fee collection costs. Local radio has its hand out for 7.61% and bringing up the rear, is the 5.05% to web-sites. That’s basically where your money goes. According the the bbc annual report.
So only 67% goes to the bbc tv stations so about £7.54 per month.
I agree there should be a choice as to whether you want to watch the bbc channels but impractical to implement. Okay with digital equipement like cable or sky as you can lock out the bbc channels if you don't pay the subscription for them.
But the point is that the bbc channels are transmitting freely through the air for anybody with receiving equipment to get them. Until we are only on sky or cable, thee need for a general catch all tax will not change.
As to whether you need a national tv and radio service is a another discussion.
Can they tell you are watching the snow channel? And do you have to pay for that?
I haven't read the whole thread.
But a quick answer to the original question - Where do they get off?
Let's see.
You've been illegally watching television for several months, you were still watching television illegaly when they turned up.
So maybe they were "getting off" by attempting to get the money that was owed to them?
What makes you think the world owes you a living?
We see this kind of post every now and again.
All big and clever telling the world they don't pay for their TV license.
Yet the minute somebody tries to make people cough up they are straight away on a public forum telling the world how unfair it is.
Pay for what you use - quite simple.
But a quick answer to the original question - Where do they get off?
Let's see.
You've been illegally watching television for several months, you were still watching television illegaly when they turned up.
So maybe they were "getting off" by attempting to get the money that was owed to them?
What makes you think the world owes you a living?
We see this kind of post every now and again.
All big and clever telling the world they don't pay for their TV license.
Yet the minute somebody tries to make people cough up they are straight away on a public forum telling the world how unfair it is.
Pay for what you use - quite simple.
Permabanned
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We did have Sky and the most I watched was Discovery, Animal Planet and the History Channel. Which are mostly repeats and +1's. Eventually I worked out what we were paying for it and I decided to cancel it. As you say, most of it is gash. A lot of it is also free to air. So now we pay the TV license, recieve the free to air and my brother pays for Setanta so he can watch his Liverpool matches. Saving a fortune.
I doubt if they can detect modern equipment and in all the research I've done, I've never come across any conviction based on detector evidence; if they were as good as they want us to believe, there would be lots of cases.
So true BBC is crap, remember years ago when bbc2 would show series like flash gordon, dare devils , farscape star trek etc... after 6 pm till 7 30pm monday to friday, and good stuff saturday sunday after 10pm now its pure crap.
£198 versus £139 a year? And they put a satellite in orbit and give you free hardware to view it.
Hardly that much difference in my opinion - considering the bbc isn't going to give everyone a freeview box when the analogue gets switched off.
No they have a French TV license that's about the same cost as ours but they still have adverts on all their channels.
Did you read any of the thread? Or just the title and make assumptions?
In the OPs opening post he says his TV hasn't been plugged in and that he's not watching it so according to that he's completely legit. Of course he could be making all that up but what would be the point...
Permabanned
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£198 for one Sky package. Want more you pay more. Two packs will cost you around the £250 mark. Two packs with Sky Movies costs £450 a year and £474 for two packs and Sky Sports. And adverts.
For me personally and my TV useage, the license fee @ £140 and setanta (no minimum contract) as and when it's needed (Liverpool games and Fight Nights) is more cost effective.
I did. For close to 10 years. I used to watch TV a lot, but for the last couple of years I've very rarely watched anything that wasn't FTA. It's a mugs game and I was most certainly mugged. I finally came to my senses and gave myself a £44 pcm Christmas present. I've already spent a few months worth of that money buying myself an Xbox360. The rest is going in a completely unexpected direction.
The possibility exists in theory with CRT TVs thanks to Van Eck Phreaking. At the very least you can certainly detect that a CRT is in use - YouTube, but whether they can see what's on your screen, I doubt, and if they could, there would be rather serious privacy concerns because they could also pick up and decode signals from CRT monitors.
Also, if your cabling isn't particularly well screened, it's possible to pick up signals from it, at least at close range. I had this problem with an old laptop which caused interference whenever a VGA cable was plugged in. Wouldn't work with an antenna cable, but it might work with a poor quality SCART from your digibox/Sky box.
Some have suggested that the detectors pick up signal leakage from the tuner circuitry itself, but I have rather serious misgivings about that one.
This would be how it's done - a superhet receiver uses a local oscillator to mix with the tuned frequency resulting in an intermediate frequency. This is then amplified a lot so it can be demodulated and a decent signal obtained. Due to nothing stopping it (you could build some filters to stop it), this is effectively broadcast on the same aerial you used to receive.
It's not a huge power signal, but it can easily be detected. If you know the frequency of the signal you've picked up, you can easily deduce what channel's you being watched. Of course, this would mainly apply to analogue TV. Digital/Satellite may have changed the game a little.
Soldato
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I just got my renewal notice today, pain in the rear end if ever there was.
This is exactly how it is done. For digital they can't tell what channel you are watching but they can tell what multiplexer your tuner is tuned to, and hence a list off possible channels.
Soldato
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I'm not sure what you mean by this.
The BBC don't give everyone an analogue tuner as it stands at the moment.
The BBC uses the same sattelites as Sky do.
Sky didn't put the sattelites in the sky.
ive got a license and am still getting threatening letters through the post. its getting quite annoying now. ive had the license little over 8 months! apparently they are going to send the bloke round 
i look forward to this, i'll just produce my certificate. (i hope i can find it)
i look forward to this, i'll just produce my certificate. (i hope i can find it)
Soldato
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lmao @ waking up to a loud mouth scottish bloke shouting though your letter box 