Digital TV subsidised

I wonder if your TV license will be tied to the decoder now and not the TV. Surely I will be able to buy as many TVs as I want without a license but will need a license for the decoder? Should mean if you have DSTV you will no longer need a license. Wait till Sipho Public realises that if he doesn't keep his license up to date they can stop his viewing. No wonder the masses don't want to go digital!
 
Is it just me or are the dates incongruent?

South Africa will start the dual broadcasting analogue and digital TV signals in November. Dual broadcasting will continue until November 2011.
Click to expand...

So if we turn off analogue broadcasting in 2011, that means it's all digital, right?

This week the cabinet approved the broadcasting digital migration policy that would result in switching the country's TV transmission mode from analogue to digital by 2015
Click to expand...

...?
 
Garyvdh said:
Here's the plan...

1) Government pays for these subsidies out of our tax money.
2) Sipho awards the contract for the manufacture of these boxes to his brother's "shell" company "Thandi electronics"
3) The units cost R100.00 to manufacture.
4) Thandi is given R700 for each unit they make from the government
5) Thandi applies R100 to the cost of the unit and pockets the rest.
6) Thandi then charges the "poor" consumers R100 for the unit since it is being "subsidised".
7) after three years someone blows the whistle on this scheme and the government spends the next ten years and 1 Billion rand of the tax payers money on investigating this scheme.
8) The units stop working after four years.
Click to expand...

That would be funny if it wasn't the truth :(
 
MadMailMan said:
I wonder if your TV license will be tied to the decoder now and not the TV. Surely I will be able to buy as many TVs as I want without a license but will need a license for the decoder? Should mean if you have DSTV you will no longer need a license. Wait till Sipho Public realises that if he doesn't keep his license up to date they can stop his viewing. No wonder the masses don't want to go digital!
Click to expand...

To me, that is what is positive about this. Currently, the legislation says if you have a television you pay the license. If it is digital, then it is clear that you cannot watch unless they open up the signal to you. The use of smart cards etc. Again, digital is more efficient in the use of spectrum and we therefore can get more channels terrestrially. You see I hate DSTV because they overcharge and I hate SABC because there is nothing there for me to watch. I don't mind etv because it is free. My major gripe then, is the tv license. It may not be that expensive, but I hate to be forced to pay for something I don't consume. If the courts in this land are any reasonable, once digital migration occurs, there will no longer be any need to force people to pay the license. SABC will have to use the smart card system like DSTV and we will see if people will continue to watch. They will have to cater for all the people they have been ignoring, just to stay in business.
 
Debbie2 said:
Indeed. I'm quite happy to spend all weekend (occasionally - ie once every four to six months) watching a series, but as for television in general.... no, what an utter waste of time.

/gosh i can hardly believe these words come forth from my mouth, back in my tv addict days I used to hate people like me....
Click to expand...

And you will not believe how quickly it can happen... I was an addict up to 6 months ago. Now I do not watch TV at all. The only time the tv is on, is when the kids are watching a dvd.

But I do miss watching the occasional program/movie lying curled up on the couch with my wife :)
 
brilliantt said:
To me, that is what is positive about this. Currently, the legislation says if you have a television you pay the license. If it is digital, then it is clear that you cannot watch unless they open up the signal to you. The use of smart cards etc.
Click to expand...
Would it not be possible to build a box that does not use smart card. They only talk of Set-Top-Boxes (STB), i.e. receivers and not decoders.

In another thread the question of whether the public broadcaster could even use an encodes service was raised or whether that would be against their mandate.
I predict it will be encoded. If you pay your TV license you will receive all the SABC channels and eTV 24/7. Without TV license you will get the news, the parliamentary and learning channel, plus all the ANC conferences - that's it. :)
 
PeterCH said:
DSTV also includes SABC channels, SABC 1, 2 and 3. So you'll
still need a licence unless NoChoice cans those.
Click to expand...

Isn't your TV license (R18pm) included with your DSTV subscribtion? I remember there have been threads about it, but can't remember the outcome.
 
So poor people, many without TV licences get a STB for a huge discount, but me mister middle class pays tax and his TV licence and now must fork out 700 bucks for the STB? How is that even remotely fair? No TV Licence, No discount in my opinion. Surely there are enough funds to subsidies the STB for everyone if only 2.5/7.5 Million people will need to pay the full price? Just makes me mad that i get no benefit when i'm being forced to pay for TV.
 
What would be really awesome would be if Multichoice included a digital tuner in their next decoder version. Don't tell me a digital tuner is expensive or impossible to make because any engineer will tell you it's not that hard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X