Basically seen a thread on some forum, and a person was scared about someone snitching them out about getting TV free this was a UK resident, and that the the UK payment authorities would get them, in other words do you have to pay to watch TV and if you don't pay is this a crime?

Please explain this to me and what it means, you have to pay to watch regular TV?

If you've a TV, you have to pay for an annual TV licence which is levied by the BB freaking C. (They don't fund themselves with advertising).

You can get fined if caught without a licence, and these seem to increase in price every year. Can't remember how much the most recent one was - around the £150 mark.

Well here we have to pay a monthly electrical bill - tv included - i guess maybe that person might have a special tv that doesn't get charged to his bill...
That's kinda lame how he's freaking out about getting caught, people do the same about illegal music downloads but nothing ever happens

That's the thing though NG, if you look in the Courts section of the local weekly papers in the UK you invariably see a whole lot of people that have got done for it. The fines aint small either.

The basic rule is, if you watch live tv, you must have a tv license. You don't need one to watch it later online or whatever.

Here in Ireland they also have a tv licensing system.
That said if you have someone over 70 in the household and they apply for their pension benefits they get this free white paper tv license with no expiry date on it :p

This is how to deal with it:

I think the BBC license fee is great. I don't think people should be fined or forced to get it but ad free TV here is HBO or something like it which probably costs more. It is worth paying to avoid the ads. Cable TV charges you a fortune and has adverts. Now that is a scam. I'd like to see reform of the whole system to be honest.

I've got nothing against people choosing to pay for an ad-free channel I-b.....Having to pay for a channel that you might never ever want to watch though is a frickin liability....Having to pay for a channel which is the propaganda mouthpiece of the State though is a frickin liability....Having to pay for a channel that pays £450 grand to a person who basically failed in their job a few weeks after they started is a frickin liabilty.....I could go on

Can't dispute anything dubs says there.

You pretty much have to have a service of some kind around here, just regular TV with that digital box doesn't work very good, that said many people go with basic cable but many have a movie package, I have satellite and a few add on packages such as sports and the free movie downloads HD, I don't know much about direct TV.

What type of signal is used in the UK I assume cable?

Satellite and terrestrial digital rick