TV&#x27;s in rooms

kenty0092

RIght this may be a bit of a stupid question but I'll ask it anyway as I can't find the answer on the website.
In our rooms I understand we can stream freeview through our laptops, but how do we do it through a TV? WIll I need to bring a special adapter? Or am I just being an idiot? haha.
Cheers

Freeview is an online service. To access it you'll need a device with Internet access e.g. a laptop or a PC. That's all you need if you just want to use Freewire. You don't need any special adapters etc.

If you have a TV, and not a computer, then you can't just use Freewire. You'll need an external antenna (aeriel), and tbh, you probably won't get amazing reception.

In either case, you will need a TV licence.

Just to note, the JCR/common room, does have a big screen TV, which you won't need a licence to view. Depending upon your JCR committee, you could get Sky/Virgin Media/BT/w.e.

Reply 2

kenty0092

OP

2

Oh right cheers for the info.
TV catch-up it is then haha.

Reply 3

DarkWhite

Depending upon your JCR committee, you could get Sky/Virgin Media/BT/w.e.

Reply 4

5Stories

4

If you watch live TV in your room you will legally need a license or you'll receive a lot of threatening letters saying they are about to fine you £100,000, take you to court, imprison your mum and take your first born son. However, you can get away without one as no one visits and they have no legal right to enter your property without a warrant anyway.

Reply 5

cunningstunt87

It's happened in recent years, just either nobody asks for it, or you end up with a JCR committee like ours.

Reply 6

5Stories

If you watch live TV in your room you will legally need a license or you'll receive a lot of threatening letters saying they are about to fine you £100,000, take you to court, imprison your mum and take your first born son. However, you can get away without one as no one visits and they have no legal right to enter your property without a warrant anyway.

Actually, a lot of halls end up with TV Licence officials coming around for spot-checks. It's happened in the past, and during a time at which they need more money, they'll do it again. That, and basic technology can find out from hundreds of metres away whether you're using a TV or not - you could make a device for less than £1000 which would do it for you, which is nothing if you catch more than say 10 people. They can enter without a warrant if you let them, which many people do, but it's easy to get a warrant - the basics of what's needed is just "suspicion".

With Freewire, it's pretty obvious - they contact Freewire and ask if you've used your account for watching TV recently, or even if you have an account, and chances are there's a clause in their Ts&Cs which says they'll give up such info upon request.

If you really want to take a TV, get a TV Licence.

Reply 7

alex-hs

16

DarkWhite

Depending upon your JCR committee, you could get Sky/Virgin Media/BT/w.e.

Just as a point of information: JCRs won't be able to get Virgin Media, as they don't run cables onto either campus (although I think technically they own all the SNS cabling and the hall room telephone system, ie the 0870 012 **** numbers, as they were originally funded by Diamond Cable, who were bought out by NTL and then Virgin). Similarly, BT Vision requires a BT Broadband subscription, and BT are either unwilling or unable to provide this on campus. The only real option left is Sky, but they charge an extortionate amount to JCRs - about £250 per month, ie about £3,000 a year - the same subscription that pubs and bars are charged... no amount of begging or claiming charitable status made any difference when I phoned them up and asked - a domestic subcription is about £250 per year - basically they told me to bugger off when I tried.

Each JCR recieves approx £55 per person per year as JCR fees - these are included in hall fees - since this is proportional to the number of students, but the sky subscription is fixed, smaller halls are disadvantaged quite disproportionately by having to pay for sky. Newark, for instance, with 400 students, pays approx £7.50 per student per year for Sky, or about 14%ish of their yearly income. Nighingale, on the other hand, pays approx £20 per student per year, or about 36%. Broadgate though, if their JCR pays for sky (not 100% sure whether they do, or if the bar pays for it) pays approx £1.25 per student. Mind you, since they started giving Broadgate JCR the same as all the catered halls (UPP used to include only a very small JCR fee until the SU and university intervened) they've been absolutely rolling in it.

So yes, most JCRs will probably have Sky, even if it is a bit detrimental to their finances. If you're interested in changing things - join the JCR committee :yep:

Just for those who are unsure - the remainder of your JCR fees which aren't spent on a Sky subscription(!) are usually spent on things such as hall parties, post-formal dinner entertainment, pool table hire/upkeep, new stock for libraries (for halls which have them - this is usually fiction books, or DVDs and CDs, as the uni libraries have course-related books), and on sports kits, equipment, and (possibly) match fees. The JCR might also have their own computer room which they maintain. Some halls have extra things too, eg Cripps has its own gym, and their JCR thus pays for the upkeep of that.

Reply 8

5Stories

4

DarkWhite

Actually, a lot of halls end up with TV Licence officials coming around for spot-checks. It's happened in the past, and during a time at which they need more money, they'll do it again. That, and basic technology can find out from hundreds of metres away whether you're using a TV or not - you could make a device for less than £1000 which would do it for you, which is nothing if you catch more than say 10 people. They can enter without a warrant if you let them, which many people do, but it's easy to get a warrant - the basics of what's needed is just "suspicion".

With Freewire, it's pretty obvious - they contact Freewire and ask if you've used your account for watching TV recently, or even if you have an account, and chances are there's a clause in their Ts&Cs which says they'll give up such info upon request.

If you really want to take a TV, get a TV Licence.

They're never going to catch you on tvcatchup, live bbc streams etc

Reply 9

lugiachan

sorry to ask , what is a freewire?

Reply 10

5Stories

They're never going to catch you on tvcatchup, live bbc streams etc

That's the point though - they do. Much like with tv-links, tvcatchup is prone to being closed down and having its logs and user databases trawled through to find offenders. Likewise, BBC will undoubtedly log basic usage statistics, and upon request of law enforcement, would gladly give them up (means more money for them if people buy a TV Licence).

Everything you do online can be tracked. There have been a good number of cases of people being prosecuted for such activity, and to take the risk is your choice, but to say, "They're never going to catch [people using such sites]" is just naive.

Reply 11

lugiachan

sorry to ask , what is a freewire?

http://www.freewiretv.com/

You can sign up and get access to 24 TV channels for free, pay for extra channels, and for things like online VoIP phone, broadband, etc :smile:

You do need a TV Licence to watch Freewire (unless you have a laptop running on battery power).

Reply 12

They did the best they believed they could do. I'll say nothing more,

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 13

mrbelding

DarkWhite

That's the point though - they do. Much like with tv-links, tvcatchup is prone to being closed down and having its logs and user databases trawled through to find offenders. Likewise, BBC will undoubtedly log basic usage statistics, and upon request of law enforcement, would gladly give them up (means more money for them if people buy a TV Licence).

Everything you do online can be tracked. There have been a good number of cases of people being prosecuted for such activity, and to take the risk is your choice, but to say, "They're never going to catch [people using such sites]" is just naive.

So you're suggesting that if someone on UP watches a couple of episodes of Qi on iplayer then the TV License people are going to request ip logs from the BBC, trawl through the data to find the correctly timestamped access by an external University of Nottingham IP address, then contact the University IT department with that information and have them track down which internal IP and which individual it was that was watching the offending material? Right... suppose that did happen I'm pretty sure I could win that court battle, I'll take the risk.

Also,

Everything you do online can be tracked.

Not true! Even a simple VPN outside of the country would be enough to prevent getting into any kind of bother unless you get yourself involved in some SERIOUS trouble with the law.

Reply 14

mrbelding

So you're suggesting that if someone on UP watches a couple of episodes of Qi on iplayer then the TV License people are going to request ip logs from the BBC, trawl through the data to find the correctly timestamped access by an external University of Nottingham IP address, then contact the University IT department with that information and have them track down which internal IP and which individual it was that was watching the offending material? Right... suppose that did happen I'm pretty sure I could win that court battle, I'll take the risk.

Also,

Not true! Even a simple VPN outside of the country would be enough to prevent getting into any kind of bother unless you get yourself involved in some SERIOUS trouble with the law.

iPlayer doesn't show live streams so it doesn't count. Nice try at sounding clever though.

Reply 15

mrbelding

cunningstunt87

iPlayer doesn't show live streams so it doesn't count. Nice try at sounding clever though.

iPlayer does indeed allow you to watch live TV. Nice try at being misinformed though.

Reply 16

mrbelding

So you're suggesting that if someone on UP watches a couple of episodes of Qi on iplayer then the TV License people are going to request ip logs from the BBC, trawl through the data to find the correctly timestamped access by an external University of Nottingham IP address, then contact the University IT department with that information and have them track down which internal IP and which individual it was that was watching the offending material? Right... suppose that did happen I'm pretty sure I could win that court battle, I'll take the risk.

Also,

Not true! Even a simple VPN outside of the country would be enough to prevent getting into any kind of bother unless you get yourself involved in some SERIOUS trouble with the law.

Of course not, but especially with the likes of the Digital Economy Bill coming into act, there are so many ways to obtain information on an individual's Internet usage, and if a site such as tv-links were to be mainly UK-used, then I wouldn't put it past them to take a sample of BBC iPlayer access logs and run a compare (not necessarily on a particular individual). They're within their right to do so. That, and the main point was that you were trying to tell people that you can watch Copyrighted content on hosting sites and not get caught, which simply isn't true, because it's happened in the past.

A VPN protect your identity? You must be joking. To access a VPN, what do you need to access? The Internet. Unless you've tapped into one of the unmonitored backbones laid under the sea, not only is the data open to lawful interception, but access to the data can be backdated through any logging node in the route. I can't guarantee there will be any logging device in the route, but I can guarantee the interception ability. Oh, and no, a secure VPN is hardly secure at all. The most common method, IPSec, has too many man-in-the-middle flaws for words, and uptake is only around 90%, so you're open to attacks such as DNS spoofing, then you're not where you think you are, let alone hidden.

Reply 17

mrbelding

iPlayer does indeed allow you to watch live TV. Nice try at being misinformed though.

Well done! Have a cookie.

Reply 18

mrbelding

DarkWhite

A VPN protect your identity? You must be joking. To access a VPN, what do you need to access? The Internet. Unless you've tapped into one of the unmonitored backbones laid under the sea, not only is the data open to lawful interception, but access to the data can be backdated through any logging node in the route. I can't guarantee there will be any logging device in the route, but I can guarantee the interception ability. Oh, and no, a secure VPN is hardly secure at all. The most common method, IPSec, has too many man-in-the-middle flaws for words, and uptake is only around 90%, so you're open to attacks such as DNS spoofing, then you're not where you think you are, let alone hidden.

My apologies, I assumed that by mentioning a VPN it would imply that I meant over SSL. The attacks you mention are not attacks on SSL/VPN but at exploiting the use of them, most people on a simple VPN are not going to be in a serious enough situation to have people trying man in the middle attacks on their network and if someone is in a situation to be paranoid about this they are bound to be far more cautious in the first place.

We could debate network security but this isn't exactly the topic at hand. My point is that I don't agree with the FUD that watching a couple of TV episodes online is going to get you locked up and I frankly dislike people preaching it. One example is TV shows that air in the US which we have no means of watching. If I could watch ad supported live Dexter for example I would, but if I have to torrent it just to be able to watch it, I will. When torrent sites/sites that stream such material get shut down they don't go after the users, they go after the people running it, going after the average users is simply not profitable.

Digital Economy Bill is indeed scary, but only scary if you're one of the people getting caught file sharing in the first place (which is a small percentile of total users I'd guesstimate). Hopefully the bill will be overturned as it is a massive assault on your and my own liberties.

cunningstunt87

Well done! Have a cookie.

Are you trying to be condescending for any particular reason or just the hell of it? It's quite tiresome really. There is far more hostility here than there needs to be.

Reply 19