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#31
05-31-2010, 08:30 PM
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First of all, sorry about the "rules" hijack, and also thanks to those that responded !
Back to the orig thread: Quote:
"Great grandad Les White, 88, from Barnehurst, Kent, still uses the 12-inch Binatone Visionstar TV he bought 60 YEARS ago. Retired sub-postmaster Les says: "I bought this in 1950 and it's just as good now as it was then. The sound is perfect. "It was the first TV I bought for my first home with my wife Wendy. I didn't get a colour set when they were introduced. In fact it was not until the Seventies that I upgraded." I suspect that he has a "false memory" of the event... over an extended time period the human brain often combines several related events and perhaps dreams as well, into one story that makes sense, even though the actual events may have actually occurred years apart. jr 
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#32
05-31-2010, 08:43 PM
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That.
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#33
06-01-2010, 02:00 AM
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The BBC exists in an unusual and subtle relationship with the UK government. It operates under a Royal Charter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Charter at one remove from government. It is funded primarily by the licence fee, payable by every household that uses a TV to watch off-air broadcasts. http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/ In the age of multichannel TV the licence has become increasingly controversial but nobody has yet devised a better method. The B&W licence is an anachronism and I suspect it will be abolished when digital switchover is complete in 2012.
The BBC frequently criticises the government and in turn the government criticicises the BBC about bias. Governments of all political hues usually want to bash the BBC but the British people usually trust the BBC rather more than their government. BBC World and other non-UK services are funded either by advertising or by a direct grant from the government. The government specifies the extent of services (eg it can say "we want a service in Arabic") but the BBC has editorial independence. I suspect there is sometimes considerable tension between the BBC and government when there is news that the government doesn't like. The BBC won its reputation during WW2 by broadcasting bad news as well as good (this is a gross simplification) and has no wish to lose it, along with its global audience, by becoming a simple mouthpiece for the government.
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#34
06-01-2010, 06:39 AM
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Good day Gentlemen,
Here's the situation in France. We have several licence-funded government TV channels (France 2, France 3, France 4, France 5 + ARTE, the Franco-German common channel). Advertising is only between programs (no cuts) and recently has been totally banned in the evening hours, i.e. after 8PM. Interestingly, the TV licence collection used to employ 3500 + IRS employees. The government changed the law 5 years ago decreeing that all households would receive the TV tax along with the residency tax which you weither you own or rent the house you live in. If you do not own a TV, you can write and ask for exemption, but checks can be done. The 3500 IRS employees now made redundant wre re-assigned elsewhere. The annual fee is 116 Euros and is one of the lowest in Europe, this is why our public channels still have some advertising, as the licence allocation is not enough by itself to ensure full funding. Compare this with UK £220.00/year in England (ppppenguin please correct the figure if i'm wrong). Best Regards jhalphen Paris/France
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#35
06-01-2010, 07:27 AM
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Imagine, I learned about the UK television license fees on "The Young Ones:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn1Y7nhB16U More recently, I saw a segment on "Trigger Happy TV" where Dom Joly had some child's toy and used it as a detector to confront people he accused of having unlicensed tv sets. Funny stuff, IMO. Just wish I could find the Trigger Happy clip. Last edited by Indian Head; 06-01-2010 at 07:31 AM.
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#36
06-01-2010, 01:57 PM
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Quote:
have to pay a fee for owning a car, right?
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#37
06-01-2010, 02:01 PM
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the funds to uses other than BBC funding, I think the BBC can be said to be independent from the government, and this fact is generally agreed on. Regards.
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#38
06-01-2010, 08:53 PM
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Quote:
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#40
06-02-2010, 02:45 PM
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One of the advantages of a licence fee is that the beeb's programming is free from the disruption of adverts (though they are starting to adopt those annoying pop-ups that tell you whats on next grrr). Whilst the Government does initially get their grubby hands on the money before passing a portion of it on to the beeb, the beeb is free to criticise the government - any interference would cause an outcry.
I went back to a B&W licence a few years back now, when my modern colour set went seriously kaput. I relied upon a mid 60's dual standard B&W set, but because it wasn't a throw-away piece of junk I only switched it on when there was something I particularly wanted to watch. Most weeks I was down to <2 hours a week ! My mistake was buying a DVD player for elderly parent - the licence people saw the purchase (big brother!) and sent me a letter saying "You seem to have recently purchased a colour television ... " (followed by some carefully worded text that thinly disguised that they'd be sending the lads round to break my legs). Anyhow I contacted them but let slip that I had a VHS recorder. Since I could record from a colour terrestrial signal I had to have a colour licence, and as I needed a VHS recorded to modulate the set top box to UHF for ye olde telly, well, I went back to a modern colour (not monster flatscreen - shame on anyone who has one of those monstrosities)(Hi Jeffrey   ).Anyhow, the UK TV licence was introduced when the service resumed in 1946 (there was already a radio licence), but people who still had a current radio licence at that time could use their telly until that radio licence expired, so it was not until 1947 that licence figures truly reflected the number of sets in use (well, in theory!). As for the "60 year old" 1980's Binatone, thats just owner's memory fade, however it is indicative of the lack of proper reserach that goes into reporting in general these days - certainly most of the newspapers are not to be considered reliable sources of information any more, but the beeb is considered reasonably good in this respect (though getting worse I'm afraid). TTFN, Jon PS : @jhalphen, colour licence is currently £145.50
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#41
06-02-2010, 03:21 PM
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Based on ancient MPEG2 technology, it started as a commercial pay-for service (OnDigital). The transmisisons were scrambled and there was a monthly subscription - I was one of the first! The picture quality was pretty good. They went bust but were bought up by ITV ("ITV digital"), still pay-for. Went bust. After maybe 6 months it arose pheonix-like as Freeview which is the current system. Its called "Free"view because only some of the channels are pay-to-view (such as UK Gold, which broadcasts a lot of the classic BBC programmes my licence fee paid for but now I'd have to pay even more to see  ). The bit-rate has dropped and dropped as more channels have been crammed in (stations need to pay their own licence fee which ultimately ends up in the government coffers), and now that "HD" is being broadcast they've robbed the standard def channels of even more bandwidth, to such an extent that some channels are barely watchable - seriously, massive artifacts in fast moving scenes. But at least HD is MPEG4 and I wouldn't be shocked if in a few year the SD channels changed so people will have to buy new equipment yet again. Having said that, I've seen BBC HD and was not impressed - lacking detail and with different parts of a stationary scene changing position relative to each other all symptomatic of poor bitrate/encoder. Yet HD is being pushed when we aren't even getting the quality of SD; some channels transmit the picture as 540x576 (which stretches to widescreen) ... if you do the maths, even if the transmission were uncompressed then the bandwidth would be about the same as the 1936 405-line signal ! Now add a lot of compression on top of that and, well, you get the gist.Sis + parent in Bristol (southern England) are now digital only, whilst here in Birmingham (central england) we are dual analogue digital but switchover is pending. This is accompanied by many propaganda adverts, how "digital is easier", accompanied by some old footage (50's?) of TV sets on a production line being set up by a boffin. However, my ma could tune an old telly - you turned the little dial til you saw the picture you want - but just can't cope with the multi-menu techy digital stuff which needs regular re-tuning as they keep fiddling with the channels - drives her mad as this usually means BBC1 switches to the Welsh language version! Digital radio is also messed up, using an antiquated technology (MP2). The bandwidth has dropped and dropped (64Kb/s for rock music - and remember MP2 is no where near as good as MP3). In fact, to get a decent digital radio quality you have to pick it up on via Freeview which also receives some digital radio stations. For example BBC Radio 7, which broadcasts a lot of radio comedy, is 80Kb/s mono on radio but 256kb/s stereo on the TV set top box. Bizarre. TTFN, Jon
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#42
06-02-2010, 05:58 PM
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In the US we still have analog radio, both AM and FM. It is my understanding that there are no plans to change this. We also have digital radio. I have a digital radio, but to my ears it sounds just like FM.
I had heard that the UK is changing to all digital radio, but recently read that this is being re-considered due to all the analog radios in automobiles.
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#43
06-03-2010, 09:42 PM
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Well the BBC and others that charge for licensing fees probably relize that TV can rot your brain. hehe. but thats my opinion. people that cant afford to get a license, probably need not to be watching TV anyway, and find something more constructive to do with themselves. But again, thats my 2 cents.
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#44
06-03-2010, 11:44 PM
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Electroking said "Yes, and the fee for a B/W set is cheaper. Nothing wrong with that, you have to pay a fee for owning a car, right?"
In the US. we do not have to pay a fee to own a car. If any politician ever put it this way he'd be out so fast it is not even funny. We pay a registration to drive our cars on public roads. If I paid to own vehicles I'd be broke. I don't drive them on public roads. The reason people stay away from using the word ebay is simple. Audiokarma has very very strict rules about trying to sell items on their forum. If you sell items on ebay and are talking about similar items on the forum you avoid the word ebay to make sure that there is no conflict of interest or misunderstanding whatsoever. Another reason is that personally I hate that f@**@*@ company even though so much of what I do is tied to it.
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The surefire way to make sure your CRT is dead, sell it to me!
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#45
06-04-2010, 12:12 AM
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We in the USA would never tolerate that situation. We have laws that specifically forbid the government from broadcasting domestically (Voice of America is for foreign listeners, but we still can hear it spilling inside the USA, but almost nobody in the USA ever listens to shortwave anyway). We take our first amendment seriously. 
Linear Mode
