The Beauty of No TV

For those of you who don't know about it, the UK has a TV License requirement. It's about $300 to get a license to own a TV. This funds the BBC.

So you think, ok, $300 is a lot, but then I get a cheap TV and I'm good. NOT! The cheapest TV I've found is about $400 for a 15" flat screen. No tube TVs here anymore. And you have to buy a digital box converter for it. This is all before you add cable and/or satellite subscription on top. On the digital boxes, you get 3-5 channels, all variants of the BBC. woohoo!

Well I've got a deal with another ex-pat who is leaving at the end of this month and will sell me his 32" TV and the digital box for about $400 total, so I'm waiting for that. The box also has a multi-band DVD player in it.

Agagin, for those who don't know, the TV and DVD algorithms here are different, so it's not just a matter of shipping your US stuff over.

So, now I'm without TV. This is not as bad as it sounds. When I was stationed overseas in the 1980s, I actually enjoyed not having TV. Now, I have all of my music on HDD, so I spend all of my time at home listening to my music collection.

This is actually really cool. I've used the iTunes "Party Mix" feature to scan through all of the music (many GBs) and randomly play music.

I imagine all of us have a lot of music on CD, and we listen to very little of it. I think people either tend to listen to whatever is new, or get new stuff and listen to the good old stuff. I probably fall into the latter category. This mix really forces me to listen to my entire collection, including stuff I haven't listened to in years. I'm really enjoying it.

I do have some DVDs I can play onthe computer, and have been downloading some though bittorrent sites. But generally, it's music and books for me. Ahh, the simple life :)