romponmafia - 5:01 pm on Mar 22, 2008 (gmt 0)

Bit late in posting to this topic but here goes:-

The UK TV system originally had only one broadcaster, BBC. To fund the cost of providing not only TV but radio as well, the UK government decided to introduce licensing as a means of raising funds. This continues to this day but we now have loads of broadcasters, most of which are commercial and so don't need funding.

Yes, we had detector vans that could pinpoint anyone receiving a TV/radio signal and did not have a licence but it was a long and tedious process and was abandoned many years ago. Now, whenever you buy a TV from your favourite store, your name, address etc are taken by the store and passed on to the licensing authorities. No escape!
As for BBC's Iplayer, it's great 'cause you can download almost anything that has already been broadcast although there are time limitations before self destruct! You can also see previews of upcoming programmes.

Nobody outside the UK can access it so it's not worth wasting keyboard time trying it, they're too clever to fall for that! Worth knowing though that together with it's worldwide websites (not mirrors), it's up there as one of the largest websites in the world with well over 2m web pages last time I checked and all updated 24/7.