First TV Licence - 2 questions

D'oh..I forgot to put in my nickname...that last reply was by me TTL!!
 
First TV Licence - Sky Ate My Wallet M"Lud

sinead76 said:
I've saved €150 odd in the last year (just over 2 months sky subscription!)
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Jeeeeeeez , I pay sky €0 PM for BBCs ITV C4 C5 and news stations .

Buy a used Sky box (€50-€100) and a "Yellow house Card" from Ebay : (€35-50)

see

[broken link removed]
 
Presumably you also need a dish, LNB, mounting bracket, installation, cabling etc.?

Is there a risk with this strategy that you might get "locked out" (either via card encryption/decoding changes or analogue to digital switch) at some point?
 
Dish and cable and single LNB are from c.€80-c.€100 (max) Clubman, yes you need them too.

There is a risk that the cards will get locked out as you say but this is unlikely for about another 2 years or so.

The cost of Dish + Card + Sky Box = €250 at the very most and about €150 at least .

Assuming it works till end 2006, (thats about 20 months) its will cost from €7.50 to €12.50 a month for the UK channels .

Even if the Card stops working you lose CH4 and ITV1 and ITV2 but still keep the all BBC and ITV3 and S4C
 
The whole TV licence collection thing is a joke. Public service TV should be like in Oz, where ABC is funded by direct taxation, or funded by voluntary donations, as PBS is in the US.
 
The whole TV licence collection thing is a joke. Public service TV should be like in Oz, where ABC is funded by direct taxation, or funded by voluntary donations, as PBS is in the US.
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Not direct taxation. Not everyone owns or wants to watch TV.

Maybe it should be funded through advertising. RTE could sell some of that expensive D4 land and trim down a bit.
 
A very fair point. Also the whole place is overstaffed, you could get rid of half the office staff whilst not affecting the quality of output
 
If RTE's budget was divided by the number of homes in the country, I wonder what the licence fee would be then? Even allowing for the cost of a governing body & the fact that a very few homes wouldn't have a TV, it seems to me they're getting a lot of dosh to make Fair City & the 6.01 news.
 
Well they do produce such fine shows as "Winning Streak" to be fair....
 
Unregistered said:
Well they do produce such fine shows as "Winning Streak" to be fair....
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I can't work out whether or not that was intended to be sarcastic! :)
 
ClubMan said:
This is not correct. The first TV license I bought in 1997 was valid from 23rd April 1997 to 31st March 1998. The latest one that I bought on 18th March 2005 in advance of the renewal date on 31st March 2005 is valid until 31st March 2006. Note that this license does not expire in February 2006. Unless you mean that the initial purchase date on which a person first buys a license dictates the expiry date for subsequent years as long as they keep renewing?
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was away for a wee break and only reading this now. You make my point exactly CM. When you purchase your first licence it expires on the last day of the previous month ie your bought your in april and it expired on 31st March. F
 
Keyboard acting funny.Anyway to continue CM your licence will alway expire on 31st March regardless of when you purchase ie earlier like this year or say next year you let it go to June - will still expire on 31st March.
 
Just a thought - I notice my renewal now has an "account" number on it. Since when did I acquire a television licence "account?" In my case it renews each April. This seems to be a rather impertinent assumption that, just because I had a TV last year, I also have one this year and they will actually BILL me for the licence fee. Why is it not treated like, say, a dog licence, whereby the owner purchases (or should purchase!) a licence as and when required. If Fido dies, you simply do not renew - you are not billed on your "account" for the dearly departed mutt. What happens if you no longer have a TV, temporarily or permanently?
 
How many TV licence holders each year do you reckon get rid of the telly?
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More than zero. I suspect that the number is likely to rise as people choose other in-home entertainment systems, many of which might be internet based.

Tellyouvision is so last century! :D
 
Unregistered said:
More than zero. I suspect that the number is likely to rise as people choose other in-home entertainment systems, many of which might be internet based.
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I would expect such systems to include a TV tuner card for the forseeable future in which case a TV license would still be required.
 
Well it's possible to stream live video (and foreign TV stations) over the internet now, so maybe no tuner card required.
 
I know but (a) I'm not sure how feasible this is on the sort of broadband connections available to most broadband users in Ireland at the moment (<= 1Mbps download/128Kbps upload) and (b) even custom computer based digital multimedia centres are likely to include a TV tuner for compatibility with existing broadcast standards for the forseeable future.
 
RainyDay said:
How many TV licence holders each year do you reckon get rid of the telly?
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Not many, but is that the point? I can think of many relevant circumstances apart from getting rid of the telly, eg, 2 licence holders set up home together and subsequently only require one licence. It would seem (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the non-renewing licence holder is then regarded as being "in arrears" on his/her "account". And my point is simply that this is an impertinent assumption which is applied in the case of no other type of licence of which I'm aware (dog, fishing, driving, pilots, firearms.) Normally licences are renewed IF and WHEN the licence holder chooses to do so. EG if my driving licence were to expire today, and I were out of the country for some weeks (and obviously not driving!) I can legitimately renew my licence with effect from the new date of application of my choice. Why is the TV licence not treated similarly?
 
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