TV licensing...

[mjr]

By getting rid of DVDs, it gives us more space for more clutter!

Bike parts aren't clutter

[kwackers]

well given the prices i pay dont see any point in selling back for 5p

We've taken some in and got 1p.

We paid a tenner for Village of the Damned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_o ... (1960_film)
It's now recorded and sold back - from memory, we got a fiver.

By getting rid of DVDs, it gives us more space for more clutter!

I realised years ago that there's so much good new stuff to watch and so little time that I rarely watch something more than once (with a small handful of exceptions).

I usually buy blu-rays, watch them with friends and then hand them in to the local charity shop. £15 for a blu-ray - cheaper than the cinema and the charity shop are v.grateful.

Unfortunately technology is catching up and half of everything I watch now is streamed so the charity shop are slowly losing out...

[Mick F]

By getting rid of DVDs, it gives us more space for more clutter!

Bike parts aren't clutter

You should see our spare bedroom!

Daughter2 is coming to stay in a week or two, so I'll have to tidy up in there a bit. The bikes and the work stand, plus tool boxes and trays of bits and bobs will all get (temporarily) relegated to the shed(s).

[Psamathe]

One of my discoveries has been the CEX the 2nd hand dvd/blue ray stores can pick up old tv series very cheap indeed as little as £1 for a first series of 5/6 dvds.

+1

No trip to town is complete without popping into CEX.
We've bought and sold loads of DVDs.

Don't tell anyone, but we record the DVDs before selling them. I use Make MKV then Handbrake, and have them as MP4 format on an external hard drive.

http://www.makemkv.com
https://handbrake.fr

well given the prices i pay dont see any point in selling back for 5p :lol: any way nice to have a backup.....

I had a big turn-out of old DVDs I've not watched in years and put them into one of the online sites (the ones where they buy them from you and pay the postage, I think I used Music Magpie). There were quite a lot and the total came to £12 at which point I decided I could not be bothered to package them up and send them off and they are still in a pile waiting to be given to the RSPCA charity shop (who will undoubtedly be making loads more money from them that I would have got).

It seemed that I'd be £12 "down" whilst the charity would be far more than that "up" - or, I can make a much bigger donation than the cost to me.

Ian

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
Not read all the posts, Scrap the BBC tomorrow for all I care.

I do watch some of there programs but I am not sure I get my moneys worth.

I have noticed over the years that, prompting young children with chalk boards, is now scrapped thanks to me

But it continues with over exposure of apparent overly mature and intelligent even adult thinking children being screened...........

I won't even mention the news about themselves and the people they pay , who profess to be freelance................

A really annoying trend I have noticed and has really got peoples goat is that their programs do not start and finish on time.
This might not mean a lot to some of you but if you consider that we work and conveniently record on our devices with EPG which is also intelligent..........................alas not intelligent enough to realise that the BBC start and stop their programs outside the EPG.......................which will manifest its self by conflicting with other programs you record on other channels so that you don't know that you will not get the whole program...........until...............you watch it!

Then you think Oh well watch it on catch up which is on BBC iplayer, assuming that you live in the 95 % of country where you have superfast We don't...............and if you remember they want to charge us to watch that some time.................soon......

Edited-
You will also notice that their (protected from any finacial cuts) BBC1 channel does not repeat most of their prime programs so if you can't watch or record it successfully they there is only Iplayer.

[Psamathe]

Hi,
Not read all the posts, Scrap the BBC tomorrow for all I care.

I do watch some of there programs but I am not sure I get my moneys worth.

I have noticed over the years that, prompting young children with chalk boards, is now scrapped thanks to me :)

But it continues with over exposure of apparent overly mature and intelligent even adult thinking children being screened...........

I won't even mention the news about themselves and the people they pay , who profess to be freelance................

A really annoying trend I have noticed and has really got peoples goat is that their programs do not start and finish on time.
This might not mean a lot to some of you but if you consider that we work and conveniently record on our devices with EPG which is also intelligent..........................alas not intelligent enough to realise that the BBC start and stop their programs outside the EPG.......................which will manifest its self by conflicting with other programs you record on other channels so that you don't know that you will not get the whole program...........until...............you watch it!

Then you think Oh well watch it on catch up which is on BBC iplayer, assuming that you live in the 95 % of country where you have superfast :? We don't...............and if you remember they want to charge us to watch that some time.................soon......

The time issue concerns me more on the BBC than other services - maybe bacuase I pay a lot of money for the BBC and the others I get for free (and if it's free you can't really complain too much - and anyway, the other free services seem a lot better at time keeping than the BBC).

Fortunately I find it bad enough to switch of the TV for but the One show seems to start early every time I have to watch the local 18:30-19:00 magazine programs. Previous program ending early is not an issue but the One Show starting several minutes early every time is.

Ian

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
BB1 is protected to the hilt.
Why overrun (3 mins) into local news with a weather forecast (they appear every ten minutes) then cut the news short by 5 mins, 1 show always starts 2 minutes early?

Then they just move their favourites (even people) from two to one.

Don't get me wrong, some of their documentaries are second to none.

Another problem they have is a problem with sound, or the lack of it, you would think that they would sound check equipment
I remember sitting through a news flash question statement from maybe the PM, it would of been interesting but you could not hear the questions from reporters so the answers were a bit dumb.
This is a very common problem with BBC, you can't blame outside broad casts, the Statement was well planned.

[Guy951]

I've just seen the BBC "News" channel (on the telly in the foyer) announce the licence fee is going up to £147 on 1st April. I suppose somebody has to pay for all those threatening letters from Tv Licensing which I've been filling my recycling bin with for the last two decades.

[kwackers]

I've just seen the BBC "News" channel (on the telly in the foyer) announce the licence fee is going up to £147 on 1st April. I suppose somebody has to pay for all those threatening letters from Tv Licensing which I've been filling my recycling bin with for the last two decades.

A £1.50 rise after 7 years of no rises.
Unless they've magically avoided inflation I doubt they'll have any extra money for stamps (esp as they're going up too).

[Boyd]

After quite period of some years Capita have resumed sending letters to my house. I genuinely do not need a license, and if I needed to, I would simply buy one.
My question is: Has anyone any experience of being visited by a representative of either Capita or the BBC?

Yes multiple times. I am not allowed to tell you what I say to them!

[Boyd]

I am interested in the type of person carrying out the visits and their standard of behaviour.

One wouldn't come into the garden just spoke to me through the hedge. He said I can see your the gardener and not the owner and the house is unoccupied, bloody cheek. How could he tell that through the hedge. He also said he had come from Sheffield as nearly everyone has a license in rural areas.
Others have just come to the door and I have told them to go away.

[Boyd]

Forgot got a letter yesterday saying they are calling on the 14th of March....or another day. Silly letter there threats are worthless.

[Boyd]

If they came in and searched the property, they would find no TV receiving equipment, but they would find a raft of computers and a fast WiFi broadband system.

This is the loophole they need to plug if the TVL is to continue in its present form.

You need a TVL if you watch live TV. It matters not if it's on line or by satellite dish or terrestrial aerial. It matters not if it's on a conventional telly or a computer or on a phone so tablet. You are still watching live TV.

TV detector vans have been consigned to history since the demise of the local oscillator and line transformers producing EHT of 15,000 volts, so they have resorted to letters and/or threats.

TV detector vans never existed or at least there ability to detect wherever you were receiving a signal. The ability to detect you sending a signal yes but not receiving one. They now claim they have the equipment that can to tell if you are watching BBC iPlayer from outside your house. They also say they will never tell anyone how any of there detector equipment works? I have feeling that won't work well in court.

[Boyd]

.

There's no need or obligation to inform the BBC or its revenue collection staff of your decision to cancel your payments.

They'll notice very soon, and then the nasty letters start, virtually accusing you of committing a criminal offence and warning you of the consequences of committing it - all without a shred of evidence that you have committed it.

The letters can be stopped by a letter to the Director General. Don't waste your time writing to any of his lackeys. in your letter tell the him that you have decided to ban BBC staff from your property. They have to abide by this, and so if you have a garden or a drive to your house those staff can never knock on your door again.

Noted I will try this
What is the address you send it to?

[Mick F]

TV detector vans never existed or at least there ability to detect wherever you were receiving a signal. The ability to detect you sending a signal yes but not receiving one.

The reception and decoding of a radio signal needs a local oscillator to "beat" with the received RF signal. This produces an IF signal and then another oscillator beats with the IF and produces an AF that we can hear.

With a telly in the old days, it was the same thing or thereabouts. The sound came as FM and the vision as AM in a dual system on the same frequency. In order to keep costs down, they combined the line oscillator and local oscillator plus the EHT to drive the cathode tube screen.

The local oscillators in radio and especially in a TV set produced a strong signal that sensitive directional receiving equipment could see. By looking at the frequency, they could see which channel you were watching. I reckon that since we went over to 625 lines and colour telly, the signals became difficult to detect.

I agree that the this is very much out of date technology now, and all the TVL detector vans have been consigned to history donkey's years ago.