Do you pay that tax also if you don't have a TV? :hmm: It seems to be payed per house (householder), not per owning a TV.

That is a bit unfair, since you might actually own a house but not a TV and never watch it (Like I do for mental health reasons :lol: ).

Well, a part of our taxes goes to funding public television and radio, but we don't have a specific tax, which we might object to. Instead they just raise taxes in general to cover things like that.

Your way might actually be better. At least you know what you're paying for.

You pay one tax for any device that is capable to receive ARD's or ZDF's "media presence", wether it be TV, internet connection, VHS recorder, or refrigerator, and you pay a second tax for radio. Eventually you also pay these taxes twice - for having a TV at home, and a PC at work in your self-owned office (even it is is inside your appartement, since it is a PC used for your working place). If you are employed, the employer has to pay. - They designed the system so that it is impossible for you to evade paying the tax - even if you do not watch TV at all. You would need to have a monitor and a DVD player without a TV receiver, and not having a PC or laptop or handy (!) with internet connection, in order to evade the TV tax. Then you still would be left with having to pay the radio tax.

In the UK it is a single payment per household with a TV in it. However amny you have.

Radios, PC, and anything not a TV are free.

I prefer this to the German fees.

Anything capable of receiving a TV signal is liable - a PC with a TV card for example, it's £140 a year in the UK.

In Germany you only pay if you have a tv or a radio (radio allone is cheaper).

No, see my specification above. A receiving device, is the criterion. Wether that be a TV, or a VHS with receiver, or a PC with internet access, does not matter.

the PC thing is new. Have they withdrawn it again? not that I heared of.

Why don't you just do what America does and pay a company for channels with no adverts? That way you get a choice at least. This is reminiscient of that E.U.-sponsored TV station that does nothing but cover the E.U. parliament and various councils. Why pay taxes when you could have something like c-span for free?

27 channels!?:D I can only assume you have so few because you're not a huge fan of television. Neither am I, but I get 200+ channels and cable internet and telephone for the reasonable price of 65 USD per month. Competition and capitalism are beautiful things.:yep:

Sure, the media can be manipultive, but if we're going to have mass media, I would prefer having many different companies compete to manipulate me rather than one state. Not that I pay them much mind, anyhow.

Still, Kay Granger has been unresponsive to the letters from myself and the Texas Libertarian Party requesting that PBS be abolished. Fecking government:damn:

<storms off muttering>

There are Pay-TV-stations, two or three, but the costs for them would be additonally to the taxes, also, I do not need and do not wish for them. I think 27 alraedy is more than what me and other people need.


200, well, thought so, but really - who needs that? i do not wish germany to get that range of stations, really. as I said, I would even prfeer the existing ones getting reduced to one third of what we currently have. Too much waste there, is, too much garbage. what I would prefer is better regular access to international news stations, at least those of our neighbours. In our regional cable, currently they only feed CNN, and on part-time Dutch TV. BBC was deleted on my state some years ago, and several other stations also no longer are fed into the cable network, you would need satellite for that, or Pay-TV again.

I thought the same until some time ago, but now have my doubts. the vast range of stations mostly spread information from one, two or three major outlets, and mirror their news without critically questioning or checking it for truth. If you have crap TV, and 20 stations of that, then you cannot compensate the loss of quality by multiplying the number of crap TV stations by a factor of ten - it seems to me, and that'S how I perceive the current media world, that this strategy only leaves you with ten times more of crap TV - a quality gain I do not really see. In fact, what I see is a more and more advancing streamlining of media. Political parties take massive influence in program policy of the public stations in germany. Or think of berlusconi in italy. Especially the BBC is on my mind as well. I considered it to be one of the best I could see, 20 years ago. Today, no more, it is a politically correct proclamation office. That I already thought when I still had it on TV until some time ago, and i still think so when reading it on internet. Their documentaries also have severly suffered. The pictures are spectacular, but the general tone of their docus, the wording of commentary and the sensational music is pushing people's thinking into a certain direction - and that is not what a documentary should, no matter if about animals, or astronomy.

In the UK the license fee goes towards things that may not otherwise be made on
a purely commercial basis and provides a range of public service features.
Because it goes to a single company, the public know where the fee is going and
the BBC can be held to account. It also means the BBC does not have a conflict of
interest when handling public money.

27 channels is what you get from public TV, so this is "what you pay for".
With cable TV (yet another payment, this time to a cable company) you get up to 400, including practically every foreign language from Porto to Vladivostok.
Actually you don't need any of them, except if you're a foreign national and want to feel at home.
A russian I knew never watched german TV at all, you hardly noticed his flat was not in Russia when the TV was running.

I've basically given up on TV:
News are ok, and I occasionally watch documentaries. The only thing I regularly watch on TV is football.
Regarding normal entertainment, I turned to the internet or DVDs long ago.
It used to be that 90% of the series and movies on german TV were US made, now it is around 50% or even less.
Problem is, "german made" does not mean every TV program is a "Downfall" or "das Boot". Most of it is simply utter crap. Some nice crime shows, but they get repetitive.
US TV series like BSG or whatever are generations ahead of everything Germany produces currently, strangely not for effects or cost of production, but really for good scripts, stories and acting.
Problem is, while US series and movies are shown on german TV, they're always dubbed. Cable TV has bilingual programs where you can switch to original, but sadly the normal programs, no matter if private or public, force you to watch dubbed versions.
While german dubbing is better than lets say russian (couldn't watch "Mongol" due to the extremely stupid russian voice-over), you simply cannot transplant dialogue.
Dialogues that sound dry and witty in US english simply sound like bragging adolescents if translated directly into german.
I simply can't watch a dubbed movie anymore.
And since that means german programs are 90% simply too stupid and US programs ruined by dubbing, there's no TV entertainment for me.
What I do enjoy are non-english european productions, scandinavians or something, for example "the crime", a danish series AFAIK nominated for some US award.

I actually I consider german synchronisation setting a standard, except the usual exceptions from the rule. I am often dissapointed when hearing american or english original tone. but soemtimes they make one of two mistakes: they completely change the original text during translation, making it something totally different, or they stick to the orginally to closely, even when a super-precise word-by-word translation does more damage than good. However, often the choice of German voices for foegin actors is extremely good. In absolutel most cases the german voices for a given actor I like much better then the sound of the actor'S origianl voice. Especially when his voice sounds high and thin like Micky Mouse. for example, the german voiceover for Sean Connery imo beats the original hands down. :D also, in the past many synchronisations wehre done by people with classical theatre background and classicaol stage actors, not just by some dude picked up on the streets. and that pays off.

So, translated program does not automatically mean bad program for me. In many cases, I prefer it to the original, for improved matching between character you see and voice you hear.

What I don't like at all, is subtitles. It is too destracting, especially when it is a high quality program, or soemthing with a focus with slow, artistic visuals.

German dubbing is most likely the best in the world, but actually I prefer subtitles
:D
First of all, I don't like all my actors to have impressive voices.
That's ok for Macbeth, but not if you have a show about average life dudes.
The funniest example was Scully in X-Files.
Her german voice was very deep and smooth, something like a later day Zarah Leander.
Originally, Gillian Anderson just sounds like your average american woman.
The problem with dubbing really is the anglish fetish.
The worst thing I've ever heard was "Ahhh, wir crashen!" in "broken Arrow"
They try to make it sound as american as possible. Dubbing was better when they took greater liberties in translation.
For example "a rebel without a cause" worked well in german language because they simply used 1950s german teenage slang instead of directly translating the dialogue.

I didn't watch it sofar, but I can't imagine how they dub "Californication".

Alien is on my mind for bad dubbing, also the new version of Blade runner, that is a total desaster, and not just because I love the film.

Famous is the chnaged texts for classical Star Trek, and the even more famous translation for "Die 2" (The Pursuaders) wrote TV history. The French, when buying the series from the British, also bought the german dubbed versions and then translated not the British but the German dialogues to french. That way, what was a boring series that was highly unsuccessful in Britain, became one of the greatest successes of comedy TV in both Germany and France.

I agree on the high quality of Germany dubbing, which in fact was a known at l.east until the mid-90s. no other country dubbed so much (almost completely) foreign programs it bought, and did that with so high quality. Also, many foreign productions came to german sound studios to use the technology there to record or chnage the text they did in their own productions, it is also was a question of know-how and technology, as weoll as having a wide range of very cometent speakers with a huge varietey of voices available. I am not aware of dubbing being done with such perfection on a regular basis anywhere like it is done in Germany.

On the other hand, straneglym the sound quality of recoridngs done for German Tv productions very often is extremely bad, as if the sound engineers were doing their jobs with deaf ears. Ver yoften they have no good sense for balancing different channels. I think this myself, but my father, professional musician he is, thinks the same. His orchestra also has a black list of names with sound engineers from rcord companies with whom they rejected to cooperate.

If you are into classical music, Decca has a very good reputation of having extremely good sound engineers, btw.

Wonder how they can control that :hmm: Of course an internet connection is controllable, but a TV? Or is in germany all TV emitted by cable? In Spain we still have antennaes on top of all houses (Making the appearence of our cities and small villages really awful :shifty: ), and I guess it would be impossible to tell who has one and who not without entering the house and searching (For which you need a judicial authorization)

BTW do you also pay again the tax for the TV system of the car navigator, or the car radio? :hmm:

Here in spain our state TV has only two channels, now also a third one emitting in digital signal, but I can't tell if they are good. I have not watched TV in more than two years :smug: (And before I already did seldomly)

I get the information now from the newspapers in internet and have no interest in the films or rubbish programs that are usually emitted, nor do I have enough time to watch the only thing that could interest me -documentaries in a specialized channel- :doh: