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[n4gix 4,947]

2 hours ago, skelsey said:

Nope - any linear TV channel, not just the BBC. Even if you only watch ITV live through the Internet, you still need a licence.

Out of curiosity, just how does the government enforce this rather rediculous "licensing" scam, er... I mean scheme.

[skelsey 765]

1 minute ago, n4gix said:

how does the government enforce this rather rediculous "licensing" scam, er... I mean scheme

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/detection-and-penalties-top5 - basically, there are TV Licensing enforcement officers (nowadays sub-contracted by the BBC from various private sector companies -- mainly Capita) who may turn up at properties that do not have a licence to establish whether a television is in use there and if so, you can be prosecuted (evasion is a criminal offence, not a civil one). There are also "detector vans" that supposedly have the capability to detect whether a TV is in use at a property.

How this works in the digital age in terms of proving that someone is streaming live TV (unless the enforcement officer actually sees it) I am not sure; I imagine that ISPs could be asked to provide data to support a prosecution, but whether this is actually happening or not I don't know. It was becoming rapidly apparent from about 10-15 years ago that young people in particular were far more likely to not own a TV and instead just watch iPlayer/streaming TV on a PC/tablet etc, which is why the law was changed to encompass such devices, and soon it will be a requirement to enter a TV Licence number to watch anything on BBC iPlayer.

[n4gix 4,947]

Thanks for the information, Simon. What a convoluted system! I was briefly tempted to fill out the no license needed form just for giggles. I would have put for a reason "I don't live in bloody Blighty you silly twits!...

Fortunately, my better nature prevailed.

[Christopher Low 5,353]

To be fair, not having TV programmes interrupted by adverts every 5 minutes is a MASSIVE bonus in its favour. There is no way that I could watch a drama on Sky TV or any other advertising channel anymore. The stop/start nature of it is so annoying  Thank the Lord for DVD box sets.

[Captain Kevin 586]

5 hours ago, skelsey said:

You need a licence to watch (or record) live TV (ie any linear TV channel - whether the programmes themselves are live or recorded), whether you do that through a traditional TV set in the corner of the living room, on a laptop with a TV tuner card or stream it over the Internet (through any service). You also need a licence to watch BBC iPlayer (the BBC's 'catch up' service).

Basically, it's now about what you watch rather than what device you watch it on. You can watch as many YouTube videos as you want, but what you can't do without a TV licence is watch a TV channel through YouTube as it goes out.

And suppose I don't do that, either.

[Luke 782]

11 hours ago, skelsey said:

You need a licence to watch (or record) live TV (ie any linear TV channel - whether the programmes themselves are live or recorded)

It will be interesting to see what happens to linear video in the next ten years. I work for a reasonably well-known media company (named after America's largest bison rancher) and we had one of the VPs come down and give us a dog and pony show about customizing the channel lineup based on data we had collected about subscribers.

The notion that I would have to wait until a show is being aired is alien to me, never mind anyone under 30. If it's not a live event, there's no purpose to linear. It will be interesting how the beeeb and others deal with this. I know we're struggling at times.

Cheers!

 

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

Live till you are 75 and it's FREE! Heh heh heh.

[skelsey 765]

5 hours ago, Captain Kevin said:

And suppose I don't do that, either.

That's fine -- you wouldn't need a licence. However, as I say, I suspect the TV licencing people would take some interest in establishing that you didn't.

14 minutes ago, Luke said:

It will be interesting to see what happens to linear video in the next ten years. I work for a reasonably well-known media company (named after America's largest bison rancher) and we had one of the VPs come down and give us a dog and pony show about customizing the channel lineup based on data we had collected about subscribers.

The notion that I would have to wait until a show is being aired is alien to me, never mind anyone under 30. If it's not a live event, there's no purpose to linear. It will be interesting how the beeeb and others deal with this. I know we're struggling at times.

Yes indeed; it's one of the big things preoccupying management at the Beeb at present, partially because of the funding/licence fee issue but mainly, as you say, because of the way in which viewing (and to a slightly lesser extent, listening) habits are changing. It's one of the reasons that iPlayer is soon going to require a login - partially for licence fee enforcement and partially with the aim of developing a more personalised service to users: I was collared during my lunch break a month or so ago to test a new version of the iOS iPlayer app that gave recommendations and personalised content. At the radio station I work for there's been a big push on podcasting and clipping short-form content for social media and the like.

I would say that across the industry as a whole there's a massive lack of understanding around what Internet-based viewing/listening figures actually mean (I've heard people describing a podcast series getting X million views as if each one was a unique person watching/listening to each episode, whilst the average listen time is measurable in seconds, for instance -- if you applied the same criteria that Rajar do for radio station figures (minimum 15 minutes of continuous listening) the numbers would be in the hundreds, if not tens), and the demographic of the audience on various platforms: the widespread assumption being that everyone on any form of social media must be a teenager, whilst I have friends whose children refuse to go on Facebook because it's full of 'old' people, for instance!

It is quite a challenge indeed...

[JRBarrett 3,071]

8 hours ago, n4gix said:

Thanks for the information, Simon. What a convoluted system! I was briefly tempted to fill out the no license needed form just for giggles. I would have put for a reason "I don't live in bloody Blighty you silly twits!...

Fortunately, my better nature prevailed.

Back in the days of analog CRT-based TVs, the "detector vans" supposedly could home in on the RF harmonics generated by the 15kHz horizontal sweep oscillator that drives the high voltage anode supply for the CRT - thereby determining if a TV set was active in a particular dwelling.

As a Ham, I'm sure you are well aware that old school CRT TV sets certainly CAN radiate significant QRM - especially on the  HF bands - loud buzzing up and down the bands. (Something that has all but disappeared with the advent of digital flat screen TV sets and monitors).

BUT - precisely because the sweep noise is so broadband, trying to "prove" that there was an illicit receiver in a specific dwelling would be next to impossible - especially in a densely populated urban area.

I've read some background on the Royal Mail detection service where retired license inspectors have admitted that the "detector vans" never resulted in a single prosecution for unlicensed viewing in the UK. Rather, they were a type of psychological warfare of sorts. Something to impress/frighten the public into complying with the license requirement.

Today, of course, with video streaming services, it would be very easy to determine if BBC programming was being delivered to a particular IP address or device, giving inspectors much more (legal) ammunition to successfully prosecute license violators.