JimCanuk, Denmark levies license fees, too. Annual license fees for 2003 are as follows:

Colour TV & Radio = 2,108 Danish Kroner (about €281)
Black/white TV = 1,356 DKK (about €181)
Radio only = 312 DKK (about €28.4)

About 83% goes to the national broadcasting service, Danmarks Radio (DR), with 16% to TV2 (another broadcaster) and 1.1% to local TV and radio.
See DR's 2002 report for details.

Edited by author 07-02-2003 06:45 PM
Actually, Germany also has TV (and radio) license fees. The TV license fee is a bit higher than the UK's (€193.80/year versus the UK's £116/year); the radio license fee is €63.84/year.

The agency in Germany that collects TV and radio license fees is called the GEZ (I'm not sure what it stands for. Gebühreneinzugszentrum, I think). You can see one of their incredibly bizarre ads here (~7MB MPEG. In German, obviously).

Edited by author 07-02-2003 06:29 PM
Homesick for the CBC Cory?Eli I think England is the only country in the world that has a TV licencing fee.Who wants to watch TV anyway, it's all kaka,peepee no substance.

What a clever way to avoid the UK TV licensing fee.

TV Tax guy: I see here that you haven't paid your licensing
fee for this year.

Bloke: That's right. Got rid of my TV.

TV Tax guy: Don't I hear the theme of East Ender's coming from
your flat?

Bloke: That's my computer. Me mate is transmitting it over the
internet for me.

I'm pretty sure the licensing is per-household for TV
reception equipment, which is what this clearly is.

http://www.tv-l.co.uk/

Shouldn't the brick be inserted through the glass front of the television?

Nobody has the bandwidth to transmit all the TV signals they receive at home over the Internet simultaneously. Not to mention the fact that, even if you could, it would be incredibly wasteful to do so. The Brick obviously has a tuner in it which can be controlled remotely from the browser. It only broadcasts what you're watching.

Dear SixDifferentWays:

As for 'channel,' that would depend on where the brick sits in the chain. If it comes after the tuner, then yes, channels would be a problem. If it's just picking up the antenna, then you do the tuning- that's just the way TV/FM tuners work usually. The antenna doesn't do the differentiation, the *tuner* selects a certain broadcast fc.

This desperately needs to be hacked. Imagine a large-scale p2p application of this technlogy: the first truly networked worldwide cable network. Each user could only watch one "channel" at a time, the channels being a connection to another user. Simultaneously, one or more (depending on the available bandwidth) others would be watching on the user's own channel.

Very cool. It's not totally clear if you can change channels remotely, and if you have to watch whatever channel the host TV is tuned to. Still, an interesting use of technology.
Seems to me for $1000, one could set up a host TIVO connected via ethernet, then download and watch programming he or she specifically chose at their leisure. If you are stuck watching shows in realtime with the brick, that could certainly cause some timezone problems. There is not too much on at 3 A.M.