In Italy the TV fee is automatically added to the electricity bill, and is IIRC non-optional.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_Italy
TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
141–150 of 562 posts
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#142I don't know about TV Detector vans, but I know about Cat Detector vans...
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#143> The United Kingdom is somewhat unique in the world for requiring those households which view broadcast television to purchase a licence for the privilege. I know at least three countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) which do the same (edit: according the Wikipedia [0], such a fee exists in basically every European country, Japan, Israel, South Korea and Namibia). In Germany, the situation changed a few years…
At least in the UK there is content on TV worthy of watching (I got addicted to snooker while there, also some quite interesting shows like "Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole"), also, when I moved overseas they paid back the licence fee for the remaining part of the year, no questions asked. Now I'm in Austria and the "content" on TV channels is just ridiculous. Targeted at 70+ pensioners, but why should I pay for t…
Back the day, before streaming was a thing, the benfit of Austrian TV was to whatch the same movies like on German private channels. Without any adds. Was quite nice. For obvous reasons, Austrian publc broadcasters lost there liscense in ermany one day. With the exception of the border regions, they cited technical reasons. Not living in a border region, I do rememeber that the Austrian news was quite good to get different perspective. Movies, as I said, were nice as well.
I do have to agree, so, that the home-grown entertainment sucks. In Germany as well. It is funny, so, that german public TV is not allowed to create their own streaming service and a lot of content has to removed from their online offerings after a certain period of time. Which kind of sucks. Especially since the rights catalogue of the public German networks, ARD and ZDF, used to be quite impressive. They just decidded to never show any of it before midnight, if at all.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#144I have said this before and I will say it again...Dear BBC, please allow the rest of the world to pay for a subscription to the iPlayer. Just take my money, really, please?
Unfortunately this is common across many countries. I'm an expat in UK and would love to get (paid) access to content from my home country (in UE) but it's simply not possible. Seems like state TV still has a long way to go.
I actually used the pirate bay last year for the first time in what feels like decades, because CBS wouldn’t give me any way to watch Lower Decks.
Netflix and Amazon carry Discovery and Picard, but when it came to LD nobody wanted my money because I live in 95% of the world.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#145Why not just tax TV sales? That's much easier to enforce, and has ultimately almost the same effect.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#146Pretty sure this was outted as fake. The idea of a van watching you is enough for many to change their behavior
They were a real thing. When an old style TV amplifies the TV signal and feeds it to the CRT tube, it leaks a lot of the boosted signal. I think the rumour that the vans were a fake was probably because they only ever had a few and it was mostly a propaganda show, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. Intelligence agencies used receivers to snoop in on CRT computer monitor signals and could re-generate the display…
I'm sure it's entirely feasible to build such a thing, but try to find a case prosecuted because of a detector van, or results used as evidence. It doesn't appear to have ever happened.
And where is the detector van union? Memorial service for the driver who crashed? Job postings?
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for your response - feel free to rant. I agree with what you said, but given there's only so many hours in the day, and I only watch TV to "switch my brain off", I didn't feel it worth the cost given that Netflix et al fills that hole just fine- for far less. To get my science / nature / news I turn to podcasts.
Thanks for YOUR response! Sorry if mine was too confrontational. I definately know what you mean. I've spent more time vegitating in front of Brooklyn Nine-nine than watching enriching educational material myself. May I recommend 2 BBC podcasts for science etc as our ships pass in the night? The life scientific 40 to 60min interviews with scientists about what they do, how they did it, why they ended up in the field.…
Will check those out. Thanks again.
Edit: aha it has Professor Jim Al-Khalili in it... He is an excellent presenter
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Geniune question: what is on the BBC that you would want to watch that you can't get elsewhere?
News reporting and current affairs analysis that isn’t constrained by commercial interests.
BBC world is far better than domestic output, and is available globally (just not in the U.K.)
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#149BBC also does fantastic children's content including mobile games app's. Cbeebies is miles better then anything else. Also, you can trust young kids with the BBC. You know there is no targeted advertising, or in game purchases. Most shows are also educational (often secretly). Licence fee worth that alone for me.
Teletubbies were made on drugs. There is no other explanation
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#150> The United Kingdom is somewhat unique in the world for requiring those households which view broadcast television to purchase a licence for the privilege. I know at least three countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) which do the same (edit: according the Wikipedia [0], such a fee exists in basically every European country, Japan, Israel, South Korea and Namibia). In Germany, the situation changed a few years…
> In Germany, the situation changed a few years ago, every household has to pay now, even if they don't own a television or radio. This was literally the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Germany: a letter demanding I pay for the TV networks I don't watch. I didn't even own a TV by that point, nor would have understood much of what was being said! A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-w…
If every household has to pay then it makes sense to abolish the tax and to fund it through the general budget instead, not least if the argument is that this is something that benefits society as a whole.
Taxes are not free to manage and collect so this also provides cost savings.
We have this debate periodically in the UK. The argument against abolishing the TV licence is usually that a dedicated tax ensures a larger independence of the BBC, which is not "at the mercy" of the government for funding, but I think this is a rather weak argument because the government already ultimately decides the amount of the TV licence fee, which is a tax.
Edit following the "reactions": By the way, in the UK it is not allowed to criticise anything related to the BBC (and the NHS) as you can see. Is it the same in Germany? :(