h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I absolutely HATE the TV licence PP

Name me five other countries that charge you to watch TV..

If you can't, my point is proven.....

BTW. No TV at home, but access to the net.....TV licence required..




GT

You're not paying 'to watch TV'. You're paying to watch TV without 20 minutes of adverts in every hour!
Setting aside all arguments about whether BBC output is of higher quality than commercial TV (and a few programmes for the masses aside, it is), not having adverts interupt my viewing every few minutes is worth the licence on its own.

Hi Gandalfstwin,

Winnoch2 got there first with my main reason for supporting the licence fee.

I don't think that whether or not anybody else pays is relevant to my appreciation of and value put on ad free public service broadcasting in the UK.

You may not agree of course - in fact I'm pretty clear that you don't (and BTW, I think it unfair that you have to pay the licence fee for your broadband - so long as you don't listen to any BBC radio either of course).

PP

PP

If you have Broadband - You pay
If you have Internet, you pay
If you have Digital Receiving Equiment, you pay

You don't pay in US
You dont pay in EC


Why do we????????




GT

You mean I get free broadband (and dialup, a few months ago) and didn't know it? Wonder what the companies do with all that money we've sent them, then

>>Name me five other countries that charge you to watch TV>>

Sweden, Finland and quite a few more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

In Ireland we have to pay a TV licence which supports the national TV channel (RTÉ) but they have advertising as well.

That should be RT followed by an E with an acute accent. I don't know what happened there.

"You don't pay in US"

'Nuf said?

PP

I've thought about that comment and it wasn't just a cheap throw away line.

I have spent time in the US and generally speaking it is pretty poor fare (IMHO). Some of the good stuff comes over here and so does some of the dross. And then they take gems like The Office and re-make them and end up with pants.

All a matter of taste I guess.

PP

Actually, in the area I live in, there are no TV stations that can be picked up without paying either the cable company or the satellite company. So TV's not free in the entire US, but I will concede that there are places that it is. Even with paying, though, there're ads on most channels (and the ones with no ads solicit funds in other ways).

The American "Office" was not pants. Unless pants are a good thing in the States. It was just different from the English Office.

In Germany you have to pay for the privilege of watching telly, too. They have fiddly rules such as radios in your car requiring the fee, etc.

According to the web site, the present fee is

Radio 5.76 EUR per month
Radio AND television 17.98 EUR per month

Of course, we all pay for all TV, whether we watch it or not.

If we have Sky or cable, we pay a subscription (often more than the TV licence). If we don't and buy anything that has been advertised on TV, the advertising budget, is passed on to the consumer at the point of purchase.

So my bet, is that we all pay rather more for commercial TV than we do for any publicly funded TV via the licence fee.

PP

OK - back on topic!

One thing I am amazed I didn't think of, as I have had to explain it to my daughter, is why Grandmas camera doesn't show the pictures straight away - she is very disappointed by this!

The whole digital photography thing has really taken off since this thread was started - back then, I had just bought my 1st digital camera, but was still using film as well.

Now everything is digital. Not only that but the volume of photos has increased may times - I must have over 1000 pictures of my daughter - and as I have a slide show screen saver, she sees them a lot, plus she demands to see "pictures of her as a baby" or other requests.

This all has a reinforcing effect on memory (I'm sure) - although some false ones are also created - she doesn't remmeber the event, just the picture.

U91473

I have quite a few memories like that. I know mostly because I remember them in sepia.

well mine are in those wonderful faded colours of 70s film (or how it looks now BEFORE being scanned in and then photoshopped - which makes them look WRONG somehow!)

The great thing about digital photography is the way old photos can be saved. Having recently done up a photo from around 1900 for a friend of her great grandparents it's amazing what can be done with a bit of cloning, colour balancing and artistic licence in altering the odd thing to make the picture look right.

I read a few days ago that Kodak are phasing out Kodachrome colour slide film (Those that you show via a projector onto a screen) as it is now accounting for less than 10% of sales. By the end of this year, it will be gone forever.......Yet another thing we can't pass on....The end of an era...............(I have a good few hundred 'slides'!)



GT

White dog poo.

PP