Firetop

This week we’ve begun an interesting experiment in my house; the television has been sold, replaced with an LCD HD monitor and a PC laptop. Everything that we watch is now downloaded via 8mb broadband using the BBC iPlayer or commercial offerings such as Channel 4’s on Demand service. Without any means of watching ‘live TV programmes’ from the BBC we no longer need a TV license… so we’re cancelling it. From what I’ve read this won’t go down too well with TV licensing but is perfectly legal, it seems they may wish to inspect our home but I’m quite open to that eventuality if and when it occurs. The BBC are not apparently expecting to see droves of people cancelling their TV licenses, in most cases they’re probably correct, but in an age where mass media is replaced with personalised services we’re definitely jumping on the cheaper, advertising free, optimimal viewing experience.

‘Live TV’ as it is defined legally for license charging (received live via a TV receiver) has been leaving us short in this household for some time. Firstly we don’t even get a suitable digital reception here on many channels, if analogue is getting switched off in 2010 we may as well find an alternative now. Secondly most of the freeview channels offer pretty low quality programmes, the World at War, old cheesy airport documentaries, police chases from Sheffield, Die Hard 1 & 2 on a weekly cycle, Top Gear re-runs and never ending soap omnibuses! Thirdly we’ve become a little concerned about our baby daughter already becoming a bit too TV fixated at the expense of developing alternative skills / interests.

So is cancelling your TV license to go online-only a bit drastic? I suppose it could be seen that way, certainly for the first two days things seemed a bit weird; no background noise from programmes that we weren’t really paying full attention to, no extra loud advertising messages and jingles to brainwash us. We discovered that if you want to watch TV programmes at 28 inches with a normal picture quality you have to download them rather than stream them - up to 700mbs at a time; BBC iPlayer’s peer-to-peer sharing is definitely a little slow versus Channel 4’s on Demand offering (50kbs per second versus 300kbs+) - around 20 minutes to download one half hour TV show.

However, once you get into the routine of just setting up the downloads in the morning and leaving them whilst you get on with other things you realise that you are in greater control, you choose when to watch them (within 7 - 30 days of download) and don’t end up being held hostage by the viewing schedule. One of the most noticeable things about using Channel 4’s on Demand service is that without any ad breaks or cheesy introductions programmes are much much shorter, half an hour becomes 22 minutes, leaving you free to watch more programmes that you really want to see or go and do something else. Even BBC TV programmes are noticeably shorter without the preamble and pointless artistic interludes of footballers or surfers.

So how will TV licensing address this new technological loop-hole? In the BBC iPlayer terms and conditions it states that ‘You do not need a television licence to watch television programmes on the current version of the BBC iPlayer.’ However it goes on to say that should they offer a live viewing service at a later date then you would need a license to use that. But I wonder how enforceable that would be even if a license number and registration became required fields? What if you chose not to watch BBC TV programmes at all and just download those from other commercial channels? Surely TV licensing wouldn’t have the man power to monitor all ISP data sources - which would infringe privacy legislation anyway? Whatever the outcome one thing is for sure, the brave new world of consumer control is going to make for some interesting product and legal planning and in the meantime you can save yourself £139.50 a year on a colour TV license.

Related article from the Register (2005):  PC tax could replace TV licence

Technorati Tags: tv license, iPlayer, Channel 4, on demand, online TV, broadband TV, internet television, BBC iPlayer, tv licensing

Bookmark to: