TV Licence article Discussion

adouglasmhor

davendebs wrote: »

i'm quite surprised at this advice from martin, and find people could get themselves in trouble over it,
they may word things funny, but if you follow this advice it would be up to you to prove you don't receive live broadcastsno it would not, you have to not have an aerial or satellite dish, ie the capability of receiving live broadcasts wrong(im assuming you still have a tv to watch your 'non-live' broadcasts here), and even not have internet!! because despite what martin said, live broadcast are available over the internetso what? you have to have watched it, or do you think everyone with the internet should be prosecuted for illegal pørn as that is available on the net too?! for example the legal tvcatchup catchup = not liveservice is all freeview channels live on your phone/computer/tablet and itv/bbc show football matches and other stuff live on over the net, so i'd tread carefully here before you decide to ditch your licence. I'd tread carefully before posting ill informed tripe all over the net, there we differ.

This is a little bit reminiscent of the 80's when if you had a black and white tv, but you had a vcr/satellite you still needed a colour licence because you still received colour signal argument.

ultimately im with everyone else i dont think we should pay it, we pay for the bbc to have radio and tv stations all round the world!! they say its for british citizens but those citizens are not paying the licence! the bbc also makes shows and sells them, just do more of that, show ads and get rid of this stupid tax!

Do some research before posting your wrong opinions as facts please?

adouglasmhor

MSE_Becca wrote: »

Then you shouldn't need a licence

HTH,
MSE Becca

But they are quite probably breaching copyright and illegally file sharing.

rottiemc

Yup, I picked up on that as well - I prefer to keep those funds earning interest on MY behalf not TVL so, once the direct debits had paid for the current year's TV licence, I cancelled the DD. I got an email from them saying there appeared to be an error with the DD (or some such wording) and I simply emailed back saying the current licence had been paid for and I was therefore 'street legal' and would not be paying anything further until the next licence was due. Never heard back from them.
In the event I didn't renew it but switched to a black and white one as most of the stuff I watch can be done on catchup and I can't afford the whacking great amount they want just to watch it in colour (in any event I can do that later on catch-up now)

BTW, if you pay for B&W you need to tell them the old colour licence is not being renewed - even though I paid for my B&W one on the day a licence was due I still had someone visit a few WEEKS later thinking the property was not covered - it seems they don't actually check the property - they just call if a licence isn't renewed!

Something else to bear in mind - there don't appear to be any payment options for B&W other than full payment at the time AND if you have a recording box of any type - if it records in colour then you need a colour licence (and I'm betting that, given the date they came out, none of them record in B&W so you'll need one that doesn't have the ability to record).

Anyone else notice that the price for second hand B&W TVs on ebay is actually going up?

HTH

Chris
in B&W Dalbeattie :rotfl:

emmablight wrote: »

I Pay For My Licence By Direct Debit, My First 6 Months Were Double And Then Went Down. I Am Therefore 6 Months Ahead. I Have Moved House 3 Times Since Setting This Up And Each Time My Licence Has Just Been Transfered. I Asked Tv Licence When I Get Back The 6 Months They Are ''looking After'' For Me And They Said Either When I Cancel My Licence( Imposible As Is Illegal) Or When I Qualify For A Free One (when I'm 65) 38 Years Away. Can Anyone Work Out How Much Interest Bbc Are Earning On My 6 Month License For 38 Years And How Much I Am Losing Out On. Will I Even Remember In 38 Years That I Have Already Overpaid, Who Knows. But The Bbc Certainly Seem To Know What They Are Doing!!

TKW

adouglasmhor wrote: »

No you are recording a live TV broadcast and for that you need a TV license.

That's a remarkably confident answer for such a hairy question! To answer the OP, yes you need a licence while you are watching the live stream.

When you press pause on BBC iplayer you stop receiving the stream of data from the BBC. You are not recording it on your computer. You are also not causing the stream to be recorded by the BBC for you to watch later as the BBC are doing that of their own volition to provide a service (time-shifted shows) to all their customers.

When you press play again a request is sent to the BBC iPlayer service to send you a stream starting at the point where you previously pressed pause.

I would argue that, therefore, you do not require a licence for the second part of your viewing.

All a bit pointless, though, as you do need one to start watching the programme! I suppose you might start watching a programme, pause it while your license expires and then restart the programme legally but that's all getting a bit silly

Simonfunk

Moved into new house on. 30/03/13 & paid 4 new TV licence as not sold current house & new TV licence will only last till 28/02/14 & not 29/03/14 as I expected- this sort of thing applies 2 everyone so there could be up to a month where u r paying which is not included in so called Annual TV licence- I think it's bit if a con TVL making extra money like this!! Shouldn't be allowed!

madmuppet5

I'm so glad MSE have put this in the weekly email.
I have no "live signal" and therefore don't require a TV licence.

I receive the threat-o-grams on a monthly basis (usually in a nice red typeface) and have a nice little collection going.
The £145.50 per year I save covers the cost of my internet and phone. :T

anotheruser

GonzoAston wrote: »

Im personally against the BBC TV license. I dont see why we should pay a company money, for watching another channel.

You are grossly mis-informed.
Channel 4, 5, ITV and Sky all receive a part of the licence fee. The BBC takes most of it yes but not all.

I don't agree with the fee either but I wouldn't want all the rubbish American TV has to do to operate (hundreds of adverts, all those extra pieces in the way of the actual programme).

It's a catch 22 as TVL can't prove you are watching live TV, but you can't prove you're not. No easy way to solve the problem.

However I wonder if the Director General of the BBC would be getting such a high salary if they had to rely on adverts....

rogerblack

kaya wrote: »

I have approached several electronics engineering companies and asked them if they can make me a device that can tell if people are watching a TV set and the answer is always the same that they wouldn't know how !

Then they don't have much of a clue.

Addressing for the moment analogue TVs.

These have local oscillators, that emit a very, very weak signal.
This can be picked up with a sensitive detector.
The light emitted by the scanning beam can be picked up, and correlated with TV programs, to work out the program. (Or even in some cases recover the picture directly)

The picture can be received directly from parasitic emissions directly from the electron gun.

For LCD/plasma TVs some of these techniques become less useful, and with digital TVs, it all gets rather more involved again.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/emc2011-tv.pdf - for example shows partial pictures recovered - with difficulty - from the emenations of modern LCD TVs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking - is the more general case.

My approach to doing this would be fairly simple - for relatively long range, you point a camera at a random street at night, and record the colour of light emitted by each window, on a fraction of a second basis.
You then compare this with the brightness of a few dozen live TV channels.
Over a short period - a few minutes - the vast number of brightness changes mean that you can use mathematical techniques to make invisible to the eye flashes from the TV tied to a specific program.
For a close-in detector, a similar approach for sound works well.

Itsnotfair

Why do I have to pay 12 months when I am away for 6 months in Europe.
If I do not use anything for any length of time I do not have to pay. The BBC forces me to pay for 1 year. Before someone says only pay for 3 months. It does not help to pay for 3 months as I still have to pay for the full year. We live in a society dominated by the BBC who make their own laws and ignore anything their fee paying public do.

ROBDOLPHIN66

I think that this is potentially a dangerous and misleading article, because WHEN they update the rules not everybody will realise and people could get caught out.

There are people in this thread saying that they have never been prosecuted, but there are others that have. Some people may be happy to take the risk where as others would be extremely distressed by a letter, let alone a visit.

Is the old thing about the potential to receive (colour) TV still in force? If it is, then surely they would argue that anybody with a smartphone, freeview box, PC, tablet, satellite dish etc etc had the ability to watch live TV, even if they did not do so.