tvless

I started this entry to write about all the reading I've been doing, but I can't do that without talking about not having a TV and more importantly why we don't have a TV and don't intend to get one at this point.

When we moved to the UK we decided that one project we could easily push to later, was making TV happen. It was an easy decision up front for a variety of reasons. First you have to pay about US$250 per year for a TV license to actually just have a TV in your home, even if you never plug it in. Check it out at the Welcome to TV Licensing web site. Now, having declined this opportunity we have given up a significant right to privacy, which also rubs my US sense of privacy the wrong way. We are subject to unannounced, warrantless searches of our home by the TV authority any time of day or night, failure to comply is subject to a fine of about US$2000. Sounds pretty authoritarian to me.

So that's obstacle number one. Then its just a matter of not being able to psychologically accept the cost of the equipment. A 26" flatscreen starts at more than US$1000 for the crappy kind (did I mention that for all the "green" there are no CRT TVs available) and up from there, forget the DVD player or the other equipment you might need, like a FreeView box if it's not digital ready.

Now here's one thing they've got right in the UK. The switch to digital radio and TV happened a few years ago. Digital radio is readily available and digital TV -- coming soon to the US -- known as FreeView in the UK delivers almost 30+ free (BBC + commercial supported) channels to watch on a regular TV set.

So that's all about the old fashion way to watch TV and it wouldn't be fair to paint this picture without fessing up to what I do watch. First I'm totally obsessed with catching The Daily Show online...cultural diplomacy at it's finest IMHO. And of course there's YouTube and Google video, but I don't actually bother with those much. But the BBC has BBCiPlayer which runs most of their mainstream program as web streams and downloadables. If our Internet connection is running as promised you can watch TV on demand, but that's a bit iffy, just another reminder that we're not in the US...sometimes it works, sometimes, not so much.

And there's one last point of no TV. We would've gotten cable or satellite, but customer service is just such a regular nightmare here -- cablevision customer service is like a spa visit in comparison to what we deal with here -- it was easy to bag TV altogether.

And now a little post script: Just to fess up, we have 2 internet connections, one personal provided by British Telecom and a second one thanks to ESI (our employer) via Twang.net. Both promise "up to 8 mps", but they range in service from about 300kps to 5mps, which isn't in the end very reliable since there's no predicting when you'll get high and low bandwidth levels. Regardless between that and online opportunites and DVDs we get our fair share, but I still have more time to read than I've had in long time.