musing

[ajva]

Random pensification sparked by a comment from josh_the_cat in adjectivemarcus's journal.

It's really annoying when people go on and on about a subject you know a lot about, and they quite clearly know very little and are wrong about many things, but you have to listen to them because 'everyone is entitled to their opinion'. I had this experience yesterday, when I was in a debate with someone about the implications of the BBC threatening to pull its channels from BSkyB. Now, this is my job. But they didn't see that as a reason that I might be any more right than them. It used to piss me off no end also when people would give advice about music and the band. Fucking endlessly. Everyone's pet subject, you see. 'You should send a demo tape to record companies'. 'You should dress like X'. 'You should play a festival'. 'You need to sharpen your sound'. I really used to hate that.

Comments

[lovingboth]

Some of that is already the case - eg you can get British TV in northern France and Benelux to such an extent that Dutch papers include the channels in their TV listings.

Another point I thought of on the way back home was planning law - at one point (and I don't remember seeing any changes) one satellite dish was ok (with some exceptions if you were living in a conservation area) but a second one needed formal planning permission.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Some of that is already the case - eg you can get British TV in northern France and Benelux to such an extent that Dutch papers include the channels in their TV listings.

It's not as widespread as all that, Ian. There is indeed a little overspill. Some Dutch viewers, for example, can receive BBC1 and 2, as well as Belgian channels TV1, Ketnet and Canvas, and ARD and ZDF from Germany. That's *some*. Once it goes beyond *some*, then it becomes a big issue, which is what we're talking about here. Also, remember we're also talking about a lot more channels, too.

Another point I thought of on the way back home was planning law - at one point (and I don't remember seeing any changes) one satellite dish was ok (with some exceptions if you were living in a conservation area) but a second one needed formal planning permission.

This is irrelevant, really. You just point your dish at whatever satellite you want to receive your telly from. If it's an encrypted signal (like BSkyB) then you have to pay for some technology (box, smartcard etc.) that will decrypt it. But a dish is a dish is a dish. I don't think there are going to be so many people wanting both services at once that extra dishes are going to spring up all over the place.