-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
You mean there is no TV "tax" - or whatever you want to call it - in the US? (a certain amount of money you have to pay each year if you own a TV or radio - in Germany that's currently around 120 Euro (about 145 US-Dollars) per year!)
-------------------- Lister: Don't give me the "Star Trek" crap! It's too early in the morning. - Red Dwarf "The Last Day"
Registered: Nov 1999
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We have to pay for things like satellite or cable, but I can buy a TV, plug it into the wall, and receive probably 3 or 4 channels completely free. However, I am forced to listen to commercials every few minutes for everything from Viagra and tampons to Kitty Litter.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Why cant they just combine those three products somehow and save us two commercials?
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
There is no TV tax. There is the TV License, something completely different in ever way. If you have a TV, you have to have it. Legally. So, not a tax, then.
You pay around �110 a year. This money basically pays for BBC 1, 2, 3 and 4, BBC News 24, the 5 radio stations, Childrens BBC, Ceebeebees (or however that's spelt), and some other stuff. None of them have adverts. You can't watch any of them other than BBC 1 and 2, or listen to any more than the 5 radio stations unless you have some form of digital or cable equipment.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Actually, Aban, you can just plug it in and get up to twelve (depending on how many you have in your broadcast area) -- up quite a bit more if you hook up a UHF antenna, too.
Back in the moldy days of the mid-80s, our pre-cable TV got ABC (4), NBC (5), CBS (7), PBS (9), local independent (11), and local independent 2 -- later Fox (13) on the regular dial, and two more independents (22 and 28) on UHF. We had an awesome local public TV station. They would have regular marathons of Red Dwarf and Black Adder, as well as slotting them into regular programming along with old Monty Python, Hitchhiker's Guide, and Fawlty Towers eps. Loved those growing up, but then I wasn't exactly a normal child.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Well, I was just talking about what *I* can get when I plug my TV in. I get NBC (16), CBS (22), ABC (Don't know the number cause I never watch it), FOX (28) and WB(25). I think I get a PBS station too, which might be 13... but I don't know. If I get it, it comes in like crap.
I never watch CBS or ABC because I don't like their programming and they don't come in all that well.
Question about British television... if you can only watch BBC 1 and 2, why are there 5 stations? Or did you mean that you can watch the other 3 if you have digital equipment...?
Registered: Oct 1999
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"Question about British television... if you can only watch BBC 1 and 2, why are there 5 stations? Or did you mean that you can watch the other 3 if you have digital equipment...?"
That's what he said. The other ones require cable/digital.
Which I guess means you pay for them twice?
Registered: Mar 1999
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There are 5 terrestrial stations (ie, stations you don't need any extra equipment to pick up). The other are ITV, C4, and C5. They are all funded by advertising, and hence have advert breaks.
If you want to pick up the other BBC channels, you need extra equipment, but you don't need to pay for them. If I let my Sky (digital satellite) subscription run out, I'll still be able to use the equipment to get BBC 3, 4, and the others.
You can also buy a "freeview" box for around �90 which gives you access to all other BBC channels, if you don't want to get a digital or cable subscription.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
'Round these parts, you pay a monthly fee to your local cable service provider for their channel package (a mix of public and commercial stations which you have zero control over and varies from area to area), a seperate municipial tax just for the privilege of HAVING a cable connection (like you do for electricity, water, etc) even if you don't own a single TV, AND a yearly national tax (which I suppose is the equivalent of a British TV license) by which the public stations are funded, despite the fact that said public stations often push more ads than most commercial ones do. Then there are the digital and satellite providers which you can also get a subscription from. Fun, eh?
-------------------- ".mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN" - TEH PNIK FLAMIGNO
Registered: Nov 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Actually, Aban, you can just plug it in and get up to twelve (depending on how many you have in your broadcast area) -- up quite a bit more if you hook up a UHF antenna, too.
You can't get "up to twelve", since per technical specifications, there has to be a one-channel (6MHz) separation between stations in VHF to avoid them interfering each other. Here in Lima we have the maximum possible: 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 in VHF. That's 7 channels in total. 4 and 5 can both operate simultaneously because there's actually a 4MHz gap between them assigned to police/military communications IIRC.
In UHF, the required gap was 5 channels (30MHz), so we used to have channels 15, 27, 33, 45 and 51 some years ago, though lately it seems they've relaxed a bit as there have appeared, for example, channels 19 and 21, with just a 6MHz gap between them like in VHF. Well, back then when it was up to channel 83 (and not 69 like nowadays that the upper end of the UHF spectrum has been reassigned to cellulars, argh) the 30MHz gap would have meant a maximum of 12 channels: 15, 21, 27, 33, 39, 45, 51, 57, 63, 69, 75 and 81 in our case. The reduction to 69 as the uppermost channel reduced the maximum to just 10. The reduction of the gap to 6MHz would give a theoretical maximum of 28 channels (squeezing another 2 between each 2 of the former 10 maximum).
Of course, all this is just for M systems, as the frequency assignments and channel bandwidth are different depending on the TV system used... (NTSC, PAL, SECAM = norm, specifies how color information is encoded into the TV signal; A, B, G, I, N, M, etc. = system, everything else, as defined before color TV existed)
Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Oops, actually the difference between system and norm is just the other way around, system defines the color coding (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) and norm, everything else...
That's what happens when you don't sleep enough during the night...
Registered: Feb 2004
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