BBC News Online – TV licence required!

[James McLauchlan]

So, here I am in Portugal looking through the BBC (UK) news online webesite and thought I’d watch a bit of live news, clicked on the link and…..

Cannot play media. Sorry, this media is not available in your territory.

mmm….. Now they tell me.

It gets better.

The BBC News channel is available in the UK only. Don’t forget, to watch TV online as it’s being broadcast, you still need a TV Licence.

So it seems whether you have a TV or not if you watch BBC news online using a PC you need a TV licence! What a crap system.

So there is a person… laptop fired up in a public Wi-Fi area watching BBC news on-line and a copper comes up and asks to see their TV licence. They duly produce it but are prosecuted anyway because the licence they hold is for their home address and they were watching the news at another address (a McDonald’s maybe?) that they do not hold a licence for.

In the near future I can imagine them introducing Wi-Fi licences for mobile surfing.

Don’t you just love the UK 🙂

[Martin Wareham]

Just protecting our assets 😛

Interesting stuff though ………………… BBC America was a god send in Houston, don’t think I could have stuck it out for as long as I did without it. Oh …… and PBS (public broadcasting channel, no adverts). It was a but of a pain when they did fund raisers though …………… c’est la vie.

[subseascott]

This always winds me up as well, when working overseas & you try to watch something on-demand the BBC obviously recognises the URL you’re accessing their page from & boom, exactly as you said James. Would be good if they had a log in & password that you got from your TV license so you could make the most of a 12 month TV licence for those 6 months that we’re away.

[mind-when-this-was-fields]

Big brother is watching….
I went to the local pc world to buy a usb-TV adaptor so i can plug it into the ships connection rather than sit with all the lunatics in the rec room.
now you have to give your name and address when buying any product to do with TVs so they can check if you have TV licence or not..
Just what do you really get for your £140!! a year???

[Ray Shields]

Its quite right that you cannot watch UK TV outside of the UK, why should you get to watch it for free 😀

Im sure you will find it is the same with many other countries TV channels. You want to watch UK tv? Move to the UK, otherwise learn Portugese 😀 :L

[James McLauchlan]

Its quite right that you cannot watch UK TV outside of the UK, why should you get to watch it for free 😀

Im sure you will find it is the same with many other countries TV channels. You want to watch UK tv? Move to the UK, otherwise learn Portugese 😀 :L

No TV licence here. The Portuguese government tried to introduce one a few years back. The people simply refused to pay. That was the end of that idea. So they just settle for ads, end of problem.
Further East they watch Spanish TV without a licence. The UK being an Island has it’s limitations in that respect… no bleed over from other countries.

BTW, you most definitely can watch UK TV outside the UK. Sky TV covers a lot of Europe and of course it has BBC news on it. It’s not free but no TV licence required. You take a hammering in the UK. You need a licence to own a TV and then pay to watch sky as well if you are that way inclined.
Oh, and as mentioned earlier, in the UK you may need a TV licence even if you don’t own a TV! How mad is that?

My initial post was more of an observation rather than me feeling I was suffering a loss of any kind. Right, I know it’s 18:00hrs, but the barbecue is ready outside and I need to go and cook the chicken before the sunset fades.

Have a nice day 🙂

[Anonymous]

In all of my travels the only place I have ever heard of a TV license was the UK.

I have absolutely no problem accessing BBC Online, license or not and I’m on a vessel in Australian water utilising an Italian server.

In more enlightened countries e.g. Oz, the public broadcaster is funded from general revenue. It used to be quoted as 8 cents per day per taxpayer.

Having recently watched BBC World (without a license I may add) I found it to be shite compared to almost any other European news channel.

[Author]

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