But don't worry, because Google is still your friend and will guide you to the BBC programmes you can't now legally enjoy on-demand via the iPlayer.
Browsing cyberspace this evening and I was struck by this tweet by Twitter user BeastofExmoor: "@tvlicensing My 74yr old wife is in tears trying to set up a Dir Deb for a licence to watch the iplayer till she's 75.We have no TV."
A second tweet quickly followed: "@tvlicensing I have also tried and the website just sends you in circles. We've not needed a licence before today. What should we do?"
I'm willing to bet that Mrs BeastofExmoor was wanting to watch last night's episode of The Great British Bake Off, which was focusing on the culinary delights of biscuit making. Last night's show was also unique in that Mel Giedroyc was presenting without her normal sidekick Sue Perkins, who was absent owing to a family bereavement.
Within 30 seconds of minimal effort I was able to establish that a copy of last night's programme had been uploaded somewhere other than the BBC iPlayer. It had been uploaded to a video sharing site and you don't legally need a TV licence to watch on-demand programmes on video sharing sites. That being the case Mrs BeastofExmoor could still get her fix of The Great British Bake Off, by simply watching it on the video sharing site instead of the BBC iPlayer. This, you might remember, is one of the workarounds mentioned in our earlier post.
Of course the scallywag that uploaded it to the video sharing site - YouTube in this particular case - has breached the BBC's copyright, but that's of no concern to any unsuspecting Great British Bake Off fan that accidentally stumbles upon the video in question.
A quick guide to searching for your favourite on-demand television programmes using Google:
1. Go to the Google website and type in the name of the programme you're wanting to watch (we'll stick with The Great British Bake Off).
2. Head to the search options at the top of the Google results page and filter out the video results (as we're looking for The Great British Bake Off uploaded as a video somewhere).
3. Use the search options again to filter out the longer 20+ minutes videos (as The Great British Bake Off is an hour-long programme) and videos uploaded in the last 24 hours (as The Great British Bake Off episode of interest only aired yesterday).
4. Hey presto! The latest episode of The Great British Bake Off.
If you're going to endure that televisual tripe, you might want to further hone your Google skills by looking up the Samaritans now.
The same principle can be applied to any television programme. The web being such a massive place, some naughty person is bound to have uploaded the programme you want to a video sharing site. There are far more naughty people uploading television programmes to the web than there are television company employees making takedown requests.
Remember that a TV licence is now needed by any person intending to receive on-demand programmes via the BBC iPlayer. The law is the law, ridiculous and wholly unenforceable as it is.
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4 comments:
"Cough"
Torrents, existing iplayer users
£145.50 saved....Tv enjoyer 1, Dubious Organization 0
Yet another example of how the greedy BBC causes upset to elderly people with their idiotic TV licensing system. Hopefully more people will make use of catch-up in the future to deprive the BBC of money until someone finally sees sense and ditches the TV Licence system completely.
'...televisiual tripe' Excellent!
In the future Bake Off will be on Channel 4 so fans of the show will have free access through their catch-up service.
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