Downloading TV shows ...

[geofftech]

you can use regular Torrent websites, or of course you can use the wonderful UK-Nova, at: http://www.uknova.com/ which is just, well ... wonderful!

[Kate]

If I can't access torrents (stupid college blocking software)...does anyone know of good sites for when the new Doctor Who episodes come out?

[SepticTone]

One thing you may not be aware of, Kate, is that the BBC is a set of TV channels entirely paid for by a £145 per year mandatory tax on every household in the UK. No exceptions, even if you don't have a TV. Not commercially-funded or funded/controlled by the Government, you see. An historical anomaly.

This tax is directly paid, by a separate, per household bill, to the BBC, and if you try & avoid it, they come down on you like a ton of bricks, believe me.

They have a nationwide database, ( common in the UK ), of which house doesn't have a licence to view a TV, & track you down that way, & send heavies round if you don't pay. (personal experience, btw). Outrageous, but then, much of the stuff that goes on here is.

I pay this tax, under pain of a very stiff fine or jail if I don't, so I really don't want non-UK taxpayers watching new BBC stuff like the latest Dr. Who series.

Might seem selfish, but yet another lesson about living in the UK.

[cbrzychcy]

You can go to SyFy's (formerly Sci-Fi) website and find it there. Or try BBC America. BBC-A also has great shows like Torchwood, Skins, Being Human, Top Gear, Primeval, and more. I don't think they release episodes online though.

ST - yet another thing I didn't know but am quite happy to have learned! I knew the BBC blocks content if you aren't from within the UK, but I wasn't sure why. If it makes you feel any better, I would feel the same as you about paying for what is put out and having every Tom, Mike, and Sue come along and be able to get it for free.

[Kate]

SepticTone - I was aware of the tax, although I didn't realize quite how irritating it was. And I can understand that you don't want people who aren't paying it to see things anyway - but I would pay a little bit if it meant I didn't have to wait six months (my college student budget wouldn't let me pay very much though, but if I could see a new episode for a pound or two, I would). Especially when you read spoilers online. SyFy and BBC America don't post the episodes on their websites.

[SepticTone]

Kate, all taxes are irritating, to say the least. But thanks for the response, girls. The BBC is an anomaly, & the license fee gets bigger every year for us Brits, but at least every programme goes out uninterrupted by ad breaks here, so a 2 or 3 hour long new quality historical drama, or an hour long series comes across with no breaks at all, so you can really get into it with no distractions, so long as you've prepared by placing your wine bottle, emergency wine, glasses, emergency food, pottie, & you've remembered to pre-feed the cat and the wife.

The BBC iplayer is a UK-free super-high quality fast backup thing that allows all UK taxpayers to view any BBC programme you've missed. Soon to be rolled out to foreign non-license fee payers, I believe, on payment of a small fee.

It's in virtually hi-def quality & almost indistinguishable from a live broadcast. Even I'm impressed by BBC iPlayer, & I'm not easily impressed, as you may have noted.

[davec]

No doubt about it, a mandatory tax on something you may not consume is irritating. In America, everything is off the socialized programmes and on your personal budget. Which means that, if you're poor, no satellite or cable for you. It's commercial TV or public television.

Commercial television is a barrage of commercials and exceedingly stupid programming. I believe you lot get Chicago's own Jerry Springer talk show over there? The stuff you see as occasional and outrageous on Jeremy Kyle--fights, throwing chairs--is daily fare on Springer, and so obviously staged. We have many talk shows of equal Neolithicity.

Public television is free, but they have always had extended periods in which they play lots of old-fart oriented stuff like 60s rock specials, frequently interrupted by pleas to phone in and pledge a subscription, for which you get a T shirt or book mailed to you. In recent years, they've also taken to having advertising too, even though they were originally, as I understand, supposed to be permanently ad-free. That's how America does things, though. The thin end of the wedge never lasts. And the programming has suffered much over the last twenty years.

My favorite hobby horse is science/nature programming, which now prominently features what I call 'grunt 'n' groan science'. A special about gorillas features a half hour of scientists discussing their assault on a mountain, checking their gear, slipping and falling on their arses, breaking equipment, discussing their heartbreaks over a canteen of water, a few quiet cheers over some minor victory, and finally, a glimpse of a gorilla in the distance at the last minute.

From Beeb, public television gets endless fiction--sometimes it seems like I live with Judi Dench--but good stuff like Battlefield Britain is no more. And they get absolutely nothing but Beeb from Britain, as far as I can tell, probably because they can get it cheaper than from other sources.

I'm self employed, and too busy to watch much TV, so I won't pay $60 to $130 a month for satellite or cable. ('Basic' $40/mo packages have almost nothing worth subscribing for.) That's 500 pound sterling a year or more, so maybe 145 isn't so bad. I guess it's the Internet from now on for the occasional quality show. I'll sit in my basement and watch on the monitor.

Socialization may be a pain, but it has its rewards. It leaves you feeling unconsulted by your elected officials, but unless you live in referendum-driven California, America is little better in that regard, trust me. Instead of programmes put in place for decades, you get to vote in something that often gets voted out before it starts to pay off.

[SepticTone]

Your satellite prices seem sky-high to me, dave ( no pun intended) for viewing hundreds of channels of crap. Our satellite prices are considerably lower, but you still get the same kind of crap,

Unless you like movies or sport. Neither of which I like, as I have the attention span of a gnat on speed.

Needless to say, I don't subscribe to a satellite service here, although I used to to many moons ago, so still have a dish & receiver, which allows me now to watch stuff free from the Astra satellite. It's called Freesat. It consists of 100 channels of crap, including Fox News, which I watch about once a month in open-mouthed disbelief for about 5 minutes. If that channel were based in the UK or Europe, it'd be shut down in days for the opinions expressed there. Crazy shit.

However, we do also have a digital free-to-air system called Freeview, accessible via a normal roof-top aerial, which provides around 50 channels of digital stuff, mostly crap repeats, & specialist channels, like for Muslim extremists or porn addicts, but some good ex-BBC reruns of David Attenborough style nature progs + documentaries, but thankfully not Fox News.

But you need a £20 decoder or a modern TV with the decoder card inbuilt to get it. But even poor people can afford that

[davec]

Fox News was everything short of being an officially declared Ministry of Disinfotainment during the Bush years. Yes, an even bigger embarrassment to this Septic than Jerry Springer.

Yes, cable and satellite prices are ridiculous. However, let me note, that's actually more like 400 channels of crap for the premium services. Endless sport of course, porn, and miscellaneous mindrot, along with what's left of science and nature programming in this country. A zillion cooking shows. What happens when you add channels is that you get 42 opportunities a week to watch a given episode of a show, rather than only 20. As if it mattered, since we've got stuff like TiVo to record it for later replay. Yank business logic to the nth degree.

[SepticTone]

I liked it here when we only had 4 channels of Tv, all crap.

Me & my wife got really good at Scrabble, jigsaws, cooking & making babies.

Not necessarily in that order, but sometimes simultaneously.