My daughter has a room in a student house in London that's surrounded by concrete buildings - now there's surprise :-) She has a TV that only picks up channel 5. There's no cable/aerial etc in the place apart from the one that came with the TV and no amount of twiddling get a picture. Can someone recommend an (inexpensive) aerial preamp that will boost the signal? Thanks
It's a bit surprising that there is something from Channel 5 and not the other channels, since this has a much lower signal level from the transmitters.
Are you sure that she has tried tuning the set?
A Yagi type set top antenna (small version of an outside type antenna), may give better results, especially if located upstairs, but generally adding an antenna pre-amplifier won't do very much if there is little signal in the first place, or if it has ghosting resulting from the surrounding buildings.
You could always tell her that she should be getting on with studies, but I don't suppose that that would be met with any better reception than she's getting already.
...mmmm ... if this TV has been moved from home to her digs then it's probably come from an area where the channels are significantly different tuning. >MOST< of London has quite good reception and is in line of sight of the transmitters. I'd investigate tuning first. She presumably only needs BBC2 anyway for the open university
Compare UK TV with USA TV. The quality we get (across all channels) is driven by the licence we pay. Cut out the licence and all you do is put (more) money in the back pocket of Murdoch and dump the quality of TV for all of us - and at far greater cost.
Would a USB TV card running on a laptop on battery power be a special=20 case? I can't remember what difference it makes, but I remember there's=20 something about battery poweed TVs.
If you are the holder of a valid tv license then you are entitled to use a portable tv away from home, if it is powered by it's own internal batteries. That what you are thinking of?
As usual, it is completely outstripped by advancing technology. I am getting a Freecom Freeview dongle for the pc. It will probably be legal away from home but depends which of my family are operating it.
Battery-powered TVs do not need a licence. Years back, I knew someone whose sole TV was a 12" B/W portable next to which sat the car battery that powered it. Of course, he'd then charge the car battery from the mains...
Not sketchy at all. You can use a 4" TV in the park - but of course you can show anyone the licence that you have for your home TV, can't you?
The licence is for equipment capable of receiving broadcast TV. If you want to run videos only (or a computer only) then you need to buy a screen/monitor without a tuner.
Here's my interpretation of the addtional permitted use cases:
o TV's powered only by internal batteries can be used by the licence holder away from home (but not by other members of the household).
o TV's in boats/caravans used for touring.
o TV's in caravans not used for touring (and includes use by visitors in the presence of the licence holder) providing no television is being used in the licenced premises at the same time.
Way back when I was in a Hall of Residence, I wrote to the licensing authority asking what the rules were for such a place. The reply was that a licence was needed for each "family unit" which had a TV, and a "family unit" was defined as a group of people who usually eat at least one meal a day together (would exclude many families nowadays;-). So in a self-catering hall, each person ended up needing their own licence, whereas in a catered hall, only a single licence was required. This was 25 years ago, and the rules may well be different now, or interpreted differently even if they haven't changed. There weren't many personal TV's in Halls of Residence back then, anyway. There were however plenty of students who ended up being prosecuted for not having licences in student houses/digs.
However, you have to satisfy yourself of the rules. I'm not paying your fine just because you believe anything I say...
It's the USB tv adapter which would be the licensable apparatus, not the PC, and the laptop battery is not internal to the TV adapter, so it would not be covered by the internal battery exemption.
You could argue that by dumping the licence fee the BBC will need to make programmes that people actually want to watch in order to keep advertisers happy, rather than the arty-farty stuff that is watched by a couple of thousand people.
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