Changes to tv licences

[ToadMum]

In my very limited experience of first year university students, traditional televisions now don't really seem to cross the radar... Pretty much everything is watched on a computer, tablet or phone and the line between live TV and 'on demand' has become very blurred!

Not so much blurred as more or less completely rubbed out for licensing purposes now...

You're right about the communal telly-watching bit. Big screen sports events in the bar, perhaps, but that would be covered by the university anyway.

[KB]

The generation that has grown up firstly with recorders of one kind or another and then 'on demand' in various formats would find the restrictions of watching TV in a common room rather odd I think.
The only time I am aware of my DCs watching in a common room or equivalent was for a major sporting event.
They tend to be quite impersonal places serving a very large number of undergraduates and generally woefully inadequate in size. Not really conducive to curling up with a rerun of Spooks or Gilmore Girls

I have fond memories of 30 or so gathering around the tv in our female only hall common room for our weekly watching of Top of the Pops and The Young Ones....

[Guest55]

I'm just saying that there is no need to watch in your room - perhaps those common room 'sessions' will come back into fashion? Dr Who was another 'big event' every week.

[ToadMum]

The generation that has grown up firstly with recorders of one kind or another and then 'on demand' in various formats would find the restrictions of watching TV in a common room rather odd I think.
The only time I am aware of my DCs watching in a common room or equivalent was for a major sporting event.
They tend to be quite impersonal places serving a very large number of undergraduates and generally woefully inadequate in size. Not really conducive to curling up with a rerun of Spooks or Gilmore Girls

I have fond memories of 30 or so gathering around the tv in our female only hall common room for our weekly watching of Top of the Pops and The Young Ones....

I was a Night Sister working a pattern of 8:6, 7:7 (nights on:off) when we acquired our first video recorder. At the time, the working week at our hospital started on Sunday - oh the joy of suddenly being able to watch every episode of something that was on after 8pm on that evening instead of a maximum of one out every four .

Have to add, but oh the despair on arriving home in the morning to find that the recording had failed for some reason . There are early 'Poirots' that I am only just catching up with now...

[SteveDH]

When I was a student I remember there was a rule that if it was a portable tv with its own power supply then it was covered by my parents licence...

and it seems the rule is still there.

They won’t be covered by their parents’ licence either, unless they only ever use devices that are powered solely by their own internal batteries, and aren’t plugged into an aerial or the mains.

from
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-y ... d=r044&x=0

So presumably as long as they watch it on a laptop/tablet that isn't plugged in, then they don't need their own licence...

also stuff (well links) on that page about refunds for summer etc

what I wonder is how is this all going to be policed...

[KB]

The rules are changing though so it will only be devices that can't be powered by from mains electricity.

The refund is for a minimum three months so won't be much use to most students.

I can imagine the cost of policing it will outweigh additional income fairly easily if they try to do so universally. My guess is they will hassle all addresses without a licence and all registered students in the hope of 'scaring' a good number into paying up.

[SteveDH]

Personally I think they ought to do what sky and virgin sort of do and give a licence payer the ability to register 3 machines, allowing you to change 1 machine a month.

What I expect they'll do is send out a lot of scary letters and frighten people into paying.