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About LinkBacksRead more.If you had to choose just one, which would it be?
Read more.If you had to choose just one, which would it be?
Given that I don't give a monkey's about films and mostly watch BBC programmes anyway, I get far better value from the BBC than I would from Netflix.
Same for me, our telly rarely goes off the beeb, whether it's cbeebies for the boy or beeb1 for us. It does get switched off, it's just when it's on, it's on those. We don't watch telly all the time, we're not monsters...
Saying that, Altered Carbon was very good, if they keep doing things like that, the balance may shift...
Netflix simply has more content I personally find interesting, be it shows or films (or more recently the Manga binge I've been on). Luckily, having my parents now live with me, means I don't have to pay for the rubbish television license as it's now free (over 75s get some perks). The only thing that the BBC does okay, is Radio 4, hate to say it but that isn't worth £150 a year with a plethora of other content providers available.
Guess it's all subjective, but the draconian way in which the BBC has been funded is now a pretty defunct model when the alternatives work well. I do have to wonder at how much money has been wasted by the beeb over the years though, instead of providing truly new original content that keeps pace with society.
This - with bells on!Originally Posted by Friesiansam
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My broadband speed - 750 Meganibbles/minute
I did this for several years where I had Amazon Prime. I didn't miss the idiot box one bit. I spend the money on a decent PC set up with a decent monitor and speakers. I also made sure I was totally above board with regards to legal acquisition of media to ensure it was a realistic experiment. The end result?
1) I didn't miss a single thing about the TV.
2) The BBC shows I wanted were (not anymore as it closed) available to download on the BBC store for a small fee.
3) The overall result was a slight saving over the TV licence fee.
4) I now resent having to pay towards a TV licence now I have moved in with my fiance as frankly, I find the content to be a net negative rather than positive.
When I was choosing shows off Amazon or watching stuff on Youtube it was intelligent stuff (either shows or lectures or debates, whatever) that actually added to my knowledge base and gave me something to think about. The stuff on TV most of the time is just burning away your evenings without actually gaining anything from it. It's literally wasting your life. Sometimes you do need that in order to relax but to do it all evening, every evening it's just filling the time between now and when you die.
The BBC needs to grow up. It comes from a time when the infrastructure for broadcast was so expensive (hell, most of it needed inventing from scratch) that only government could afford it. It's the same with flight and space travel. Now we have civilian aircraft and private companies planning trips to other planets. Yet the BBC still lives in a land of what's effectively a tax. If you don't have a TV and don't pay it you get some seriously threatening letters. If they turn up at your door they'll issue you with a police caution (no legal punch behind it, it's an intimidation tactic.... y'know, like the Mafia use when they want people to pay up) and start implying the police will break your door down. They need to be taught a lesson and that lesson is you will not extort money from OAPs who don't want or need a TV. That and you're now going to compete on the same grounds as everyone else for business. If people don't want BBC and channel 4 (public funded also) then they don't have to have it and can still have sky, etc.
It's an outdated model from a business that has taken things too far.
Freeview only for us.
Plenty of children's programming for my girls, Masterchef for the wife and Cunk on Britain for me.
Spike has some MMA and kickboxing and Film4 is showing some late night Kung-fu films.
According to this website: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one
They say you need a TV license for watching live TV on an online TV service or website such as; All 4, Sky Go, Virgin Media, Now TV, BT TV, Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video and ITV Hub.
The interesting one here is YouTube. So strictly speaking I would need a TV license to watch a Twitch stream as this is being broadcast live or a Facebook live video? - How on earth can this be legal? this is just silly - these services have absolutely nothing to do with the BBC or the UK government so why should I be paying them for the privilege of watching content on them - absurd.
Incidentally I do have a TV license but only because we have Virgin and my wife sometimes watches E4. In answer to the question - if I had to chose one of them it would be Netflix 100% of the time.
Well the bbc news coverage has been dodgy for some time. Everything on the left gets hammered while everything on the right is presented as reasonable even though the country is in ruins. At least on netflix the fiction is labelled as such.
Last edited by outwar6010; 07-04-2018 at 02:29 PM.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
Iota (06-04-2018),neonplanet40 (07-04-2018)
BBC is lost to me these days. They are stretched too thin & seem to be loosing track of what it is they do. Just an example yesterday - I love BBC 6 music, for the range of music & entertaining light hearted chatter....but I turned it on yesterday to here a women in her 80s selling her book on the Patriarchal society we now live in & how she is against it. After 15mins of listening to her talk about the failed dates she been on & having a good laugh at the previous poor blokes attempts at wooing her I quickly turned it off. Radio 4 maybe, but not 6 Music.
All 4 - Channel 4 content
Sky Go, Virgin Media, Now TV, BT TV, Apple TV, Amazon Instant Video - BBC Content.
Youtube and ITV? Are they showing programs funded by the license fee? Thought ITV was purely commercial? Good question about Youtube though, I can't see how that has anything to do with the license fee.
Edit: All live TV apparently, so ITV as well. However, NOW TV is completely questionable if you don't have the entertainment pass, you can use it purely to watch films (not live tv, not covered by the TV License requirement). Draconian crap, needs to be scrapped or to have a completely different funding model depending on what services you use or want to use.
Last edited by Iota; 06-04-2018 at 08:40 PM.
I think the wording is poor on that link, which I think they regularly do on purpose honestly.
It states:
If you’re watching live TV, you need to be covered by a TV Licence:
if you’re watching on TV or on an online TV service
Then goes on to define an online service:
An online TV service is any streaming or smart TV service, website or app that lets you watch live TV over the internet. This includes services like All 4, Sky Go, Virgin Media, Now TV, BT TV, Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video and ITV Hub. Find out more about watching online and on mobile devices.
However, it states only if you are watching live TV through it. Many broadcasters, particularly news channels broadcast 24/7 on YouTube, so you would technically need a license for these, but not to watch PewDiePie or the latest Katy Perry music video.
As for my personal opinion on the TV license, I consider it basically fraud. Imagine having to pay a fee to The Sun to read The Daily Mail or imagine having to pay Ford to buy a Vauxhall.
BBC needs a complete shake up, I'm not against a public institution, but not at its bloated scale. Entertainment shows should be sold off and the money refunded to the license payers. BBC will then be reduced to news, politics and educational shows. They especially shouldn't be competing with the likes of Sky to win broadcast rights for sports.
If I had to choose just one, I think it would have to be Netflix due to the variety of content on offer.
It's probably something I could actually do easily, but in reality as it's not an either/or scenario, I'll stick with paying the TV license too as I like having the option to watch live TV at any time, especially as I wouldn't want to have to wait to see the newest episodes of Doctor Who. Plus I also appreciate the fact that a lot of different content is funded as a result of the TV licence.
Last edited by Output; 08-04-2018 at 08:28 PM. Reason: licence -> license
TV license every time. It broadens your horizons by presenting shows that you would not choose to watch.
I stopped paying for my TV license ever since the Tories commandeered the BBC to be part of their election campaign. The idea that the BBC report stories in an impartial manner no longer holds true as others have alluded. Particularly, after threats coming from Tories over the break up of the BBC. I suspect someone like Rupert Murdoch and other media moguls would love to see to see the BBC broken up too and resulting in boosting their own bank balance.
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