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TV detector van

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Re: TV detector van

#231

Post by xtracto »

hogFeast wrote: post #183
filoleg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe when you buy a TV retailers are required to take down your address Is this for real? I remember thinking "dystopian as hell" when I heard about all the CCTVs in England, but this one takes the cake. I can at least see the points made by the other side of the CCTV argument, even though I very much disagree with them. Why cannot one just buy a TV in England without giving out their personal info?

It is actually worse than this. They send out the letters (it often seems randomly) AND they will send someone to come to your house who will "inspect" your TV/demand entry/make threats... ...this is one of these utterly bizarre public sector things where the govt will hire a private company to chase down people (usually immigrants, unemployed, etc.) and give them a cut of whatever is looted...unsurprisingly, this ha…

> ...this is one of these utterly bizarre public sector things where the govt will hire a private company to chase down people (usually immigrants, unemployed, etc.) and give them a cut of whatever is looted...unsurprisingly, this has proved to be controversial in practice.

This actually happened to me! I (Mexican living in the UK) was at my rented flat with my father visiting. We were watching a movie in a TV I had (which I mainly used to watch DVDs or things from my computer) when suddenly someone knocked at the door. I usually never opened (I did not have many friends while living there) but given that my father was there, it would have been weird to leave the person ringing the bell while we were watching the movie.

Turned out to be one of those license guys. As an expat without knowledge of my rights, I did not know what to do and the bastard kept pushing... until I let him in. He "inspected" the TV where we were watching the movie, and I told him that yeah I had a TV but did only use it for watching DVDs. At the end, he "saw" that it did not have an antenna and he basically said that because of that, we were OK (it kind of felt as if he just wanted to get out of the awkward situation).

After he left, my father and I talked about how crazy was that system were they send mafiosos to check if you had a TV... first world problems.

Re: TV detector van

#232

Post by ajna91 »

scatters wrote: post #212
dzhiurgis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to NZ. Glad to get out of UK's weather and rat race. Went to Hawaii for couple weeks one year ago. Experienced culture shock. NZ is probably best place in the world.

> NZ is probably best place in the world. Unless you're a woman of reproductive age.

Why is that?

Re: TV detector van

#233

Post by LandR »

djmobley wrote: post #53
tomxor wrote: post #43

You might think these vans were crazy then, what's more crazy today is how they continue to force their opt-out licensing upon everyone like it's still 1946 and they are the only broadcasters in town. If you live in the UK and own a TV you must pay the BBC whether you want the BBC or not! I'm one of the minority who don't own a TV in the UK and even then they make it their business to inform me every two years about…

To be clear, a licence is required to watch live TV on any channel, not just the BBC.

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ104

If you are only watching Netflix / Amazon etc on Demand programs you do not need a TV licence.

Re: TV detector van

#234

Post by tom_mellior »

tehlike wrote: post #58

Another way this could be possible is embedding inaudible-to-human-ears audio cues into the stream.

There was a story going around a while back that claimed that one of the big Silicon Valley companies was doing this: Bought TV ads that had such audio clues, then eavesdropped on you to detect them. I don't recall if it was Facebook's mobile app or Alexa that supposedly did the listening.

A very quick web search didn't uncover anything concrete, but I'm somewhat certain I didn't dream this.

Re: TV detector van

#235

Post by dom96 »

oxidising wrote: post #12
wyldfire wrote: post #8

While reading I thought, "for sure we will get to the part of the article where the British realized their folly and discontinued the licensing." But that part never came. Brits: is this for real, does this still exist? Do you pay a license to use your TV? Is it only for OTA programming or using the device in general?

We pay the licence fee to fund the BBC. They make some amazing documentaries (Planet Earth, Blue Planet etc). They also have radio stations, all advert free. Being advert free is rare these days.

If it's just to fund the BBC then why is the TV license necessary for watching other TV channels live as well?

Re: TV detector van

#236

Post by jacquesm »

noir_lord wrote: post #117
monkeynotes wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ads were hugely dystopian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NmdUcmLFkw I am an ex-pat and as an adult I am have become quite disillusioned with the UK and glad to have gotten out a decade ago. I miss nothing about England except my friends, and I'd feel sorry for them, but they all seem mostly happy with life. Paying a license to have a TV (and it's assumed you must watch TV), opt in porn on the internet, CCTV ev…

You don't have to pay for a license for a TV, you just tell them you don't watch live broadcast/streaming and they send a letter every free years.

All years are free if you don't pay for a license for a TV ;)

Re: TV detector van

#237

Post by EdwardDiego »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #217
dzhiurgis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to NZ. Glad to get out of UK's weather and rat race. Went to Hawaii for couple weeks one year ago. Experienced culture shock. NZ is probably best place in the world.

> NZ is probably best place in the world. Unless you, say, like to travel, or want to live in a place with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

> want to live in a place with people from a wide variety of backgrounds

Our largest city is also our most diverse.

> Auckland is one of the world's most culturally diverse cities with the fourth most foreign-born population, an international study has found. > With 39 per cent of its population born overseas, the city is revealed to be more diverse than Sydney, Los Angeles, London and even New York.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object...

Re: TV detector van

#238

Post by FooHentai »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #217
dzhiurgis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to NZ. Glad to get out of UK's weather and rat race. Went to Hawaii for couple weeks one year ago. Experienced culture shock. NZ is probably best place in the world.

> NZ is probably best place in the world. Unless you, say, like to travel, or want to live in a place with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

NZ's pretty diverse. South Island less so as it's mostly rural.

Re: TV detector van

#239

Post by raverbashing »

soneil wrote: post #201
monkeynotes wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ads were hugely dystopian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NmdUcmLFkw I am an ex-pat and as an adult I am have become quite disillusioned with the UK and glad to have gotten out a decade ago. I miss nothing about England except my friends, and I'd feel sorry for them, but they all seem mostly happy with life. Paying a license to have a TV (and it's assumed you must watch TV), opt in porn on the internet, CCTV ev…

I don't begrudge the TV licence too much. I used to, and then I moved to Ireland - where I pay a roughly equivalent amount for a roughly equivalent licence, which funds RTÉ (and tg4? unclear) with nowhere near the same results. And still ads. It turns out the better half of Europe has TV licences in one form or another - but for some reason, we never hear about them. When the UK has to fund a state broadcaster, it's…

The enforcement actions and publicizing of the license in the UK seem to be the most dystopian, in Ireland it's a bit over the top as well

But you're right, it is present in multiple countries, I think Germany and France just turned it into a household fee

Re: TV detector van

#240

Post by coldtea »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #221
coldtea wrote: post #194

How about a small flat fee everybody pays to sustain the national broadcaster? Whether they watch it or not is not relevant. It's a nation-wide service at their disposal. Either it's worth it to have, like a dam or a highway system or whatever, and it's ok for people to pay for it in taxes, or it's not, and it should close.

Because now you're proposing that people be charged for something even if they don't use it and don't want it.

Yes. In many countries that's how nation-wide infrastructure, services, art programs, and so on are funded. Not on a person per person basis.

Not everywhere it's all about the individual and their whims. If the majority (well, through elected representatives) wishes to have and sustain a public good (whether a public broadcaster, or national health service, or arts grants, or whatever), individuals have no other say on the matter.

Some countries believe in public goods, and in maintaining through taxes infrastructure to make citizens more educated, informed, cultivated, etc. If someone is a brut and could not care less, they don't get to dictate to the nation not to have those services.

E.g. the German example of the tax for the national broadcaster a fellow commenter mentions:

"Any household in Germany is legally obliged to pay this quarterly fee, regardless of whether or not you watch the TV channels or listen to the radio stations covered by it. It also covers media consumption online via on-demand services such as media players, streaming services accessed online via computer or smartphone, as well as in-car audio. Shared households are only required to pay this per household, so 4 students living together for example would only be liable for paying the fee once."

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