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TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

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Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#361

Post by M2Ys4U »

hnlmorg wrote: post #185
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of those shows because they are cheap to make. In reality the BBC's funding has been squeezed for years, largely for political reasons. The current government would love to kill it completely but they can't do that directly.

A lot of those shows aren't BBC though. Take that list in question: - Taskmaster: Channel 4 (originally Dave. In fact before that it was a Edinburgh Fringe Festival show written by "little" Alex Horne) - Would I Lie To You: BBC - 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown: Channel 4 (interestingly it's a spin off of "8 out of 10 Cats" which was C4's sort of version of "Have I Got News For You" but C4 did an anniversary series o…

>- Taskmaster: Channel 4 (originally Dave. In fact before that it was a Edinburgh Fringe Festival show written by "little" Alex Horne)

Dave is owned by BBC Studios, which is the commercial arm that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#362

Post by kwanbix »

matthiasv wrote: post #269
kwanbix wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC in Germany Netflix €14, Disney+ €7, Amazon Prime Video €6. And all 3 I can watch whenever I travel. The TV/Radio Tax is about €18!!! and I can only "enjoy" it in Germany!!! Not only that, the quality of programming quite bad, and to make it even worse, I am forced to pay for it when I don't even watch it. When I moved to Germany it just blown my mind.

Are you also complaining about other parts of societal funding that does not benefit everyone? You could argue about so many things that might not affect you directly (schools, police, roads, …) but at the end of the day you may also profit indirectly from those as well (more educated people, fewer crimes, proper goods distribution, …).

Schools? Police? Roads? Seriously? You gave probably the worst examples you could have. You only missed firemen and hospitals.

But even then, why so expensive? It is a lot of money. Germany has 80 million people, assuming 4 persons per house, that is 20 million homes times 18 times 12 is 4 billion euros per year to pay for shitty tv shows.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#363

Post by whizzter »

progre wrote: post #118
jamesrr39 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a new TV and got a phone call from Radiotjänst a couple of weeks later, asking where they should send the bill for the TV license. Busted! Now that the fee is discontinued, and it comes out of tax money instead, I sure don't miss getting those invoices.

The electronics stores had a reporting duty as I remember.

Yeah, it was some law iirc. Regarding being busted, i was zapping one day when the bell rang so i opened the door to the inspector with the remote in my hand and the TV blaring, THAT'D i call getting busted :D

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#364

Post by vaduz »

jansan wrote: post #244
camkego wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the technology used to detect the signals as described in the article was also used during World War II to detect radio transmitters of spies and other operatives. It’s very real technology.

But transmitting is different from receiving. How do you detect a receiver?

Rather trivially, as any superheterodyne receiver from has an intermediate frequency oscillator that is mixed with the signal - and it is hard to not emit RF from that.

Modern equipment just tends to be better designed to tighter tolerances as both the standards on inadvertent emissions and manufacturing have been tightened so it emits much less - but still not zero.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#365

Post by kwanbix »

germanier wrote: post #326
kwanbix wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC in Germany Netflix €14, Disney+ €7, Amazon Prime Video €6. And all 3 I can watch whenever I travel. The TV/Radio Tax is about €18!!! and I can only "enjoy" it in Germany!!! Not only that, the quality of programming quite bad, and to make it even worse, I am forced to pay for it when I don't even watch it. When I moved to Germany it just blown my mind.

Most of their content is streamable worldwide. Exception being licensed content for which they only acquire the rights for streaming to Germany. Why would they buy worldwide licenses? Netflix and the others also don't do that – they only get licenses for the local market (of which they have much more of course), travelers are just a byproduct.

You cannot access it from abroad. That is what I was told at least since I don't watch German TV. If what you say is right, I doubt, my bad. Still, I am forced to pay something that I have absolutely no use. Is like if I was forced to pay for slaughterhouses if I am vegan (I am not).

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#366

Post by M2Ys4U »

forgingahead wrote: post #231
mrkwse wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quite frankly it's ridiculous - imagine needing to pay a "fee" to CNN/Fox News/NYTimes/Yahoo just because you have a internet connection and web browser. This comparison is ridiculous. The license fee is a little outdated in certain aspects but it covers more than just broadcast news as the orgs you mentioned do. The BBC has a broad remit to inform, educate, and entertain. Not in itself radically different to a lot…

While you're certainly correct about the ideals of the BBC, there are enough people who have decidedly stopped consuming their content, either because of the terrible decline in quality (I stopped reading BBCNews because of the clickbait years ago), or preference not to consume it in general. Mandatory license fees, and any enforcement to collect as such, is therefore completely ridiculous in this day and age.

More than 90% of households in the UK watch/listen/read at last 1 things on the BBC every week.

A lot of people say "Oh I don't consume anything the BBC makes", and often they just don't realise that they do.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#367

Post by cheph »

flower-giraffe wrote: post #211

I think the funding and governance (by Royal Charter) of the BBC have historically provided a huge benefit to society in the UK. Advertising free children’s TV (and radio) may have delayed the onset or rampant consumerism fuelled by commercial TV elsewhere. The BBC microcomputer project is arguably the origin of ARM CPU’s. Initially the license fee was for radios, I can’t find a reference but I remember being told as…

> perhaps the license fee could also fund the infrastructure for something like signal

Why like signal? Signal has no protections to avoid the same abuse as WhatsApp.

While I would agree with the sentiment, I think that if EU funds anything it will just as likely be much worse than WhatsApp than better than it given their track record (e.g. stupid popups on every damn website that makes life just that extra bit worse).

But there is some hope in that both the french and German governments have adopted Matrix. The benefit of this manner of funding (through adoption and payment for actual services) is that there is actually a customer/provider relationship - and the potential for more direct feedback. That way if it totally sucks you don't end up with a situation where the people authorizing payment/funding are not affected by how badly it sucks.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#368

Post by Hard_Space »

DrBazza wrote: post #345
jonathanstrange wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BBC is awesome, their news is very good and they produce some of the best series in the world. It's a shame that they have split up BBC UK and BBC International so strictly and do everything they can to lock all BBC UK offerings to citizens of the UK. It infuriates me that I'm redirected from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com and are being displayed something else than people in the UK. If I go to bbc.co.uk, I do that to find out…

> My girlfriend would gladly pay for being able to access BBC UK series, but that's apparently impossible. There's the Britbox streaming service, but I have no idea whether it is international. Otherwise, there's limited amounts of BBC content on Netflix. But again, that may just be the UK version.

It's not international, and is jealously geo-blocked. As a Brit expat, I wish it was available. They are effectively refusing my custom, presumably because they can make more money from international licensing deals for terrestrial stations and higher-reach streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#369

Post by afavour »

flower-giraffe wrote: post #211

I think the funding and governance (by Royal Charter) of the BBC have historically provided a huge benefit to society in the UK. Advertising free children’s TV (and radio) may have delayed the onset or rampant consumerism fuelled by commercial TV elsewhere. The BBC microcomputer project is arguably the origin of ARM CPU’s. Initially the license fee was for radios, I can’t find a reference but I remember being told as…

Strongly agreed. Having lived in the US for a good number of years now I can see how the idea of vans roaming looking for TV viewers is baffling, but the public TV offering by the BBC, while definitely not perfect, is miles ahead of both the public and network offerings on US TV (though credit to the likes of PBS and NPR for doing miraculous work with a fraction of the budget!). I even got my start in computing from the BBC Micro machines at school.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#370

Post by doikor »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #202
doikor wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Finland they just moved the payment into taxes in 2013. Basically 2.5% starting from income after 14000€ and maxes out at 163€ collected. https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/newsroom/visual_aids_for_pre...

Which is absurd to pay for if you're a foreigner not speaking Finnish, as the public broadcaster basically offers no content in English other than (poorly) translated news.

YLE also has some originally English content (and as we don't dub adult programs in Finland you can enjoy them too). For example the early seasons Game of Thrones were shown on YLE in Finland (this was before HBO Nordic existed)
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