Does us and europe still have diff video stardards these day

[Niode]

well that's a bit of an exageration, but it didn't take me long at all. I do type very fast though, not sure my typing speed, but if I ignore grammar and spelling I can pump out a lot of text very quickly. Hence why most of my long posts are loaded with tons of grammatical mistakes.

I did take a typing test years back for an office job. And in it you got marked down for grammar or spelling mistakes, I scored 68 wpm on that at my best... that I do know.

I remember taking a typing test for a job once. They gave me 4 A4 pages of prose. They gave me half an hour... I typed it up in 15 minutes and asked if they had any more...

O/T

The UK is going through the digital switchover right now. It won't really affect anybody apart from the extremely old farts who have had a TV far longer than it should have physically lasted. We can get digital TV over the air and set-top boxes are roughly £10 for the el-cheapo ones from the supermarket. That's usually good enough for the vast majority to watch their soap-operas every night.
Pretty much every TV manufactured and sold en masse in this country is an LCD/Plasma, you have to go to a specialist store to get anything like a rear projection DLP or even a standard tube TV (of 21" or larger, small 'portables' of around 15" are still available quite readily) these days. Most of these TVs come with free digital tv tuners as standard, quite a few are migrating to the freesat HD service as well. Freesat HD being the first HD service that is sans-subscription, it just requires a mini-dish installing in place of an aerial but after that minor charge it's completely free.

So the digital TV thing is a non-issue in this country. Likewise with the PAL/NTSC difference in analogue signal, pretty much any TV manufactured in the last 10 years has the ability to accept both signals apart from the cheapest of the cheap portable CRTs and even then it's only that it's in black and white. Plus we have SCART as the main standard for analogue connection which is awesome. I really feel sorry for you guys in the US having to put up with s-video and not having true RGB.

[lordofduct]

Hey Niode,

so from what my information has given me:

in the past if you owned a TV you had to pay the licensing tax because you got BBC.

Now this is old information I know, and I merely have it because of the long jokes about it in early 80's sitcoms like "The Young Ones" and "A Bit of Fry & Laurie" which made up most of the garbage I grew up on. My mother is a dweeb, she knows it. It's probably also what accounts for my vocabulary today... now that's sad, foreign television effected my speech. Only if my mother got over her infatuation with you brits earlier! Then maybe I'd be speakin' French or Italian... crap, scratch that, I'm pleased!!!!

So anyone, for information sake, what do they do now? Especially with Sat being much more common today. I mean shit, if you're paying for satellite they can't force you to pay the license fee for cable when you aren't using it... or do they!?

[Niode]

Hey Niode,

so from what my information has given me:

in the past if you owned a TV you had to pay the licensing tax because you got BBC.

Now this is old information I know, and I merely have it because of the long jokes about it in early 80's sitcoms like "The Young Ones" and "A Bit of Fry & Laurie" which made up most of the garbage I grew up on. My mother is a dweeb, she knows it. It's probably also what accounts for my vocabulary today... now that's sad, foreign television effected my speech. Only if my mother got over her infatuation with you brits earlier! Then maybe I'd be speakin' French or Italian... crap, scratch that, I'm pleased!!!!

So anyone, for information sake, what do they do now? Especially with Sat being much more common today. I mean shit, if you're paying for satellite they can't force you to pay the license fee for cable when you aren't using it... or do they!?

Yes, unbelievably you do. You still have to pay for a TV licence. It's mainly because the BBC has such clout over broadcasting in this country that you have to have BBC channels. There's no way to opt out. Since you are capable of viewing the BBC you must have a TV Licence.

I don't have one. I have a TV, but it's not connected to an aerial so I don't have to pay. It doesn't stop them sending letter after letter accusing you of being a criminal because I haven't paid for the licence despite me not using it. I just send the same old letter back saying I do not watch TV broadcasts I use it for a monitor for DVD's games consoles etc. I literally have the letter saved in computer and I just print it off and send it back in the paid envolope they send. They still don't get the message...

So yeah, it's bullshit. Things like iPlayer let you watch any bbc programme you want, whenever you want. No tv licence required. I think the licence has it's days numbered now though to be honest. Especially when they start 'topslicing' part of the licence fee and give it to channel four (a channel that is solely paid for by advertising, well, that is until the BBC start giving them money). I can't see too many people taking kindly to that particular move once it becomes common knowledge.

[lordofduct]

Yeah I've been listening to Fry on his 'podgrams' lately and he has discussed that a few times.

AW CRAP, damn it, now I need to find a different way to get my podcasts now that I'm on Linux... grrrrrr.