The Big Bang Theory

Hold on here, do you mean, that TV is supposed to be free where you live? Where do you live?? Over here, you'd be lucky to get away with $30 a month for 50 channels. plus $100 with labor and the receiver.
we have 50 free to air channels
Freeview / Home / Channels

My original thing should have said I was gutted to pay for my TV set.

here's the point I'm trying to make.

Do we all agree that Radio is free? you don't pay a subscription at all, yet you can receive all channels broadcast on Longwave, shortwave, and FM bands.

Or you can chose to purchase a DAB radio and receive further broadcasts from DAB stations that are broadcast in digital, (hence why your analogue equipment can't receive it)

the same is true of the Television.
in most places in the world there is, (or was) free to air TV. broadcast on UHF and VHF wavelengths, you tuned into these analogue signals with your TV set that's capable of receiving analogue signals.
then along comes digital broadcast, just like DAB radio it's digital, meaning that your analogue receiver equipment is no use for receiving it as it cannot decode digital signals.

Hence you have the option to buy a new TV, or a set top box to convert the digital signal to analogue or composite/scart video so that you can watch it on your older TV.


perhaps without sarcasm would be easier.
but how can it be free when you have to pay for the set top box and have to wait 1 year for a new US program to come here?

i'll just torrent - if you know what i mean (and most people here do) :)
it's free because you don't need a subscription.
if you already had a set-top box, or if you already had a TV capable of receiving air broadcast digital signals, (like DVB-t if you're most of the world, excluding N America -ATSC, S. America, Japan ISDB-Tor China -DTMB)

just because your old TV was not capable of receiving DVB-T signals and you had to buy a receiver capable of receiving the broadcast you wanted to tune to it doesn't make it not free.

the same as DAB digital radio is still free, despite the fact that you need to buy a digital radio as analogue radios don't/won't/can't work to receive digital signals.



I live in the UK, so even free to air channels are not exactly free as there is a thing called a TV license. yes it's an evil commie device (state broadcast), it's a stealth tax) it's £150 per household per year for those households who wish to receive TV broadcast signals.

The TV licence is a license for owning Television broadcast reception equipment, (this includes headless VCRs).

You can not pay the TV license in the UK if you choose to not own a TV, or if you chose to never watch broadcast television, -you can still watch videos/DVDs and still attach game consoles to a Television and not have to pay the license fee.

Personally I don't mind paying the TV license, I believe that my £150 gives me extraordinarily good value for money with regards the BBC programming, (4 mainstream programme channels + 1 24 hour news channel) and of course Radio, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5extra, 1extra, 4extra) and then less mainstream, for stations broadcast in the Gaelic and Celtic languages, local radio stations, local television stations for providing local news. and probably a few more things I've forgotten.

The BBC also has a commercial arm that produces TV shows that are then sold to people in other countries on a subscription model, (top gear / Doctor Who are probably the most popular). output from the BBC commercial arm is not funded by the license fee, though activities of the commercial side of the BBC do support services in addition to the license fee that license fee payees receive.



still a stupid idea calling it freeveiw and you have to pay for the box, why did they have to turn of the analouge broadcasting? WHY TVNZ????
The reason that analogue TV was turned off is that Analogue TV takes up a broad area of the radio spectrum.
for the 5 terrestrial analogue channels that were broadcast in the UK it's possible to broadcast 25 digital channels


In the UK we have 53 channels, plus 4 High definition channels, two channels that are interactive and 25 radio stations broadcast to DVB-T capable receivers. these can be broadcast, roughly speaking in about twice the bandwidth of 5 channels.

for each 1 analogue station 6MHz of spectrum space is used,
for every 5 digital stations about 6MHz is used, (less for radio as compression can be greater as there is no picture information.)

hence 5 analogue channels requires 30MHz of spectrum space.
whilst 25 digital channels require 30MHz of space.

changing to digital also means that space in a different part of the radio frequency spectrum is cleared up.

The UK finished digital switch over in October last year.
this year we have 4G mobile broadband, because that's using some of the space (not all) that analogue TV was using.

Digital TV is a good thing as we get more channels, and faster mobile broadband.
free view tuners are pretty cheap, (in the UK it's easy to get one from freecycle for nothing!)
 
no, you used to get a fuzzy picture and ghosting instead.

it's just a different representation of a bad signal.

also, you may find that if you're getting a bad picture all the time then there is something wrong with your antenna.
 
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