and just because... the sound track to Mike Miller's awesomeness...

I wouldn't ban scarab even if I could. I guess it's the slippery slope aspect that worries me here. Someone posts a way-off-topic extreme opinion (that everyone finds offensive) about a potentially sensitive subject, and eventually someone else posts something they find just as offensive but about which not everyone agrees, and before you know it someone's calling you a racist for not liking the BBC license fee.

That's how the rest of the internet works. Bungie.org has been a respite from that kind of stuff, for the most part, not that we never get contentious.

Just call me cranky old dude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pTRXboRhyI

If your apparatus is CAPABLE of receiving or recording then you are liable and will be fined if you don't have a license. You don't have to be caught watching - they just need to prove that you could have watched. The wording on the law was: set up to receive or record broadcast tv signals.

A few years back (okay, maybe 12 years back) I didn't own a TV and I played console videogames through a Hauppauge TV tuner card. The TV licensing people wrote to me, a very threatening-worded letter implying I was a ne'er do well and I would be fined. I rang them and said I didn't use it to watch/record TV (the truth; I had no aerial) and they kind of just went "Oh, ok then."

Times have probably changed though! Those were simpler times for sure.

Sorry. I guess I'm behind the times. If off-topic now means political debates, which is what this thread devolved into, I'm out. I can find that EVERYWHERE else.

Did it? I missed that. Yeah, I still think the no politics/religion thing is still kosher.

EDIT: Lol - I kinda found that interesting.

I think iPlayer warns you if you try to watch something on the same day but, I think, that it's a dialog box with a don't-ask-me-again checkbox. Too bad for you if you let your license lapse and think that you are OK because it's safe to use iPlayer.

I bought something from PC World, I can't remember what it was but it wasn't a TV and the girl at the till wanted my address for the BBC. I raised a stink and the manager put his address on the form. It was probably a monitor with a built in TV tuner. I bought it as a monitor.

Now kiss and make up. *starts filming*

PS - for the non-brits - there is a British law that lets the BBC tax everybody who is capable of receiving or recording a broadcast television signal even if they don't actually watch the BBC. You just need to be theoretically capable of watching or recording their stuff. It's like the new York Times being able to tax all Americans who can read or have eyes that work.

That's just screwed up, even if I do like some of BBC's programming.

If it literally *was* a tax, it'd put the BBC under massive political pressure to ensure its continued funding with each successive government, which may be more or less inclined to protect it from the free market: this is precisely what the Tories are trying to do anyway, although the license fee's rate is a little harder for them to directly influence. This would transform how they broadcast and lobby for continued funding in much the same way the US political system is skewed towards continued campaign finance instead of actual political process. In short: it'd be a disaster.

In actual fact, the license fee is non-payable if you're over 75, or don't watch or record BBC content *as it is broadcast* (i.e. Streaming on-demand is fine). This means lots of people can get away with not paying if they for e.g. only watch on-demand streams on an iPad, an increasingly common occurrence. I don't think characterising it as a draconian 'tax' is remotely accurate or fair, and in actual fact the BBC is the envy of nations the world over, all thanks to how the license fee is set up.

I hate

• the TV on as background noise
  
• searching for something good on
  
• complaining that there's nothing good on

I'd much rather

• have it off
  
• play Halo
  
• use computer or read book

My family would turn on the TV and stop talking. I saw TV as antisocial. But I've seen the opposite where it is put on very loud then everybody talks over it. And everybody seems to be monologuing - if there were five people in the room then you'd have four * separate verbal tracks and me thinking WTF?!? It can be quite stressful.

* 5 tracks if you include the telly.

I can't dispute any of these things - I barely watch broadcast TV any more, *but* I still value the BBC for:

* Education projects (stuff like GCSE revision guides, education films etc.)
* Co-funding many excellent cinema films from smaller firms that wouldn't ever get big studio funding
* Giving Murdoch at least *some* competition in the news market, and not rolling over. If you want a vision of what the UK would look like without the BBC just turn on Fox News

My point is simply that the value we all get from the BBC merely existing extends well beyond the direct benefits (subjective) of watching TV programs.