TV Licence article Discussion

Zapito

cw18 wrote: »

... the £145 a year you spend on a TV licence buys me a lot of second hand DVDs

Well, to be second hand they're gonna be, what, five or ten years old? Plus they gotta be stuff that the first owners thought not good enough to keep. No news or current affairs or sport of course. Pretty limited I'd guess.

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Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

What do you mean by "us lot" :huh:

LLFers

Cornucopia

Zapito wrote: »

Well it's your beef, not mine. OK, I'm willing to help a bit, if there's some way I can, on the basis of fairness. But it's up to you to decide the questions you want, so for you to check whether they've already been asked etc. If you would then like me to go over them with you, fair enough, I'll do something like that. But I'm not about to carry out your research for you!

The original question was JimmytheWig's - I think we've already answered what he asked.

The vast majority of what I watch is recorded, which is far more reliable than catchup, and of course not only can I watch it when I like, I can also keep it as long as I like.

IIUC, the implied permission to record off-air doesn't extend to keeping recordings forever. In fact you could easily find yourself not just in breach of the Law, but also in a morally questionable position... sound familiar?

Hopefully no one on the internet will try to lecture you about it, though.

More generally, catch-up and recording are somewhat different mechanisms. I often "find" things by accident, and I find this quite a positive thing, as opposed to (in the past) scanning the listings for repeat showings for something that I've already missed the opportunity to record.

Don't know why I'm telling you this but anyway, you can get the BBC TV schedules online (eg Google "BBC 1 schedule") then get any date you want (not sure how far back it goes) and click on a programme to get to it on the iPlayer. I'm just too nice. Guess I subliminally want to get you in the habit of catchup so that when the law's changed then you'll have to get a licence!

We'll have to see how the law change works. The proposal is that it will extend the Licence to cover PSB channels' catch-up. So I could easily stay LLF if I wanted to.

I wasn't very clear about what I want from a catch-up TV guide. I didn't mean linear TV listings, there are plenty of those, and my Youview box has a "back-in-time" EPG that integrates into the catch-up players. But I no longer really think in terms of linear schedules.

What I'm interested in is a service that flags up catch-up programmes telling you when they will start being available, when they will finish, what they're about, reviews and ratings...

Zapito

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

What do you mean by "us lot" :huh:



We do state, that we do not encourage or condone LF Evasion.

Good.

We also state that, if someone legally requires a licence, they should get one, or, preferably, go LLF.

Why "preferably, go LLF"? Why is that "preferable"?

[Deleted User]

Zapito wrote: »

LLFers

You're lumping those of us who are LLF, in with the "liars and cheats"?

Zapito

Cornucopia wrote: »

The original question was someone else's - we may well have already answered what he originally asked.

Er, I think you'll find it wast thyself, old son:

Cornucopia wrote: »

The problem is that because TVL are aggressive and incompetent, and because the BBC are very coy about the numbers, we simply don't know the true scale of true evasion.

So, in order to get to a true picture, we'd need to know-

- How many TVL cases (even where the defendant pleaded guilty) were not actually "safe" in terms of there being good evidence of evasion?

- How many cases are "casual evasion"? I'm sure you will cry "foul" over this one, but in my experience the vast majority of TVL defendants arrive at this position by accident rather than intention. Whilst that's no defence in Law, I think we have to question the public interest in populating our Courts simply on the basis of a level of churn around bank errors, benefits failures, etc.

- How many evader households are so well prepared and well-versed in the Law as to be able to evade with impunity (which is an inherent weakness in the system the BBC has designed and implemented)?

- What the rate of progress is, by TVL, through the evader population? The reported evader percentage has remained relatively static for some time, which suggests that Capita (or it could even be the BBC) are not interested in "catching them all", for some reason.

I think that would begin to give us a true picture of what is going on.

I'm happy to condemn willful evasion - I just don't know how much of a problem it actually is, or how committed BBC/TVL really are in sorting it out.

Then I wrote:

Zapito wrote: »

Have you tried a Freedom Of Information request?

https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request/the-freedom-of-information-act

and it went on from there.

At least, that's how I read it anyway.

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Cornucopia wrote: »

What I'm interested in is a service that flags up catch-up programmes telling you when they will start being available, when they will finish, what they're about, reviews and ratings...

You can have all that and more for a mere 40p per day. :cool:

Cornucopia

Zapito wrote: »

Er, I think you'll find it wast thyself, old son...

JimmytheWig's question was before that, and that quote from me led from his question.

cw18

Zapito wrote: »

Well, to be second hand they're gonna be, what, five or ten years old?

Some are newer, some are older - but most are firm favourties I used to watch every time they got rehashed on live TV (which was hardly ever done on the BBC channels)

Plus they gotta be stuff that the first owners thought not good enough to keep.

I personally know several people who buy, watch once or twice, and get rid within a year - regardless of how good they think they are.

No news or current affairs or sport of course.

And those are the kinds of shows I never watched, so I'm hardly going to miss them

Pretty limited I'd guess.

Limited only to things I enjoy, which means I always have something on hand to watch if/when I feel like doing so - and that wasn't the case when I relied on live TV for entertainment.

Zapito

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

You're lumping those of us who are LLF, in with the "liars and cheats"?

I stand corrected. I should have said NLP (Non Licence Payers) .

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Cornucopia wrote: »

JimmytheWig's question was before that, and that quote from me led from his question.

Well there's no link to JTW's post in yours and I don't remember it. It was your post I was responding to. And it was you who claimed the answers were required.

Me, why should I care? I pay the licence and I think that morally you should too, certainly if you use BBC services - I could see the justification for anyone who never uses BBC (but if they use BBC radio or iPlayer or other BBC services then IMHO it's morally right to pay the licence too). But that's not the law anyway, the principle of the law is the Beeb is paid for by a levy on anyone who gets TV, and all the wiggly-out stuff is mere mean-minded squirmification to avoid paying a mere 40p per day.

A bit like the tax laws that enable some people to wriggle their way out of paying. All in the same squalid boat, IYAM.

Zapito

cw18 wrote: »

Some are newer, some are older - but most are firm favourties I used to watch every time they got rehashed on live TV (which was hardly ever done on the BBC channels)

I personally know several people who buy, watch once or twice, and get rid within a year - regardless of how good they think they are.

And those are the kinds of shows I never watched, so I'm hardly going to miss them

Limited only to things I enjoy, which means I always have something on hand to watch if/when I feel like doing so - and that wasn't the case when I relied on live TV for entertainment.

Fair enough. I have no dispute with any of that.

[Deleted User]

I've got about 600 movies and TV series, on DVD/Bluray, so I have plenty of stuff to watch, without resorting to broadcast TV.

It also means, when I want a fix of TBBT (which is often), I can watch the episode(s) I want to watch, rather than the one(s) they happen to be broadcasting.

I can also watch shows that haven't been broadcast in years.