And if you don't pay, you'll get regular visits from TV licensing agents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...

Which you can completely ignore, because the agents are just standard salesmen really - they have no special rights. It also costs you money to report that you don't have a TV, so the simplest way is just throw the notices straight into the bin.

(Unless you do have a TV of course)

* If you don't pay and watch live TV.

You can choose not to have a TV and not pay the license. Without the license you can still watch BBC iPlayer (although not the live bit).

Believe me, you still get visits and threatening letters from the TV licencing people.

You just need to fill in the form at https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/no-licence-needed/ every three years. I've done that before and it's stopped the letters.

It didn't work for me, they still sent threatening letters every few weeks that all but accused me of lying.

I love the BBC (even though I didn't always own a TV) but in my experience the TV licencing company are bullying scum.

That's a whole lot less than paying for cable to get ESPN

Most of the sports channels aren't covered by the licence fee, you still have to pay for cable (or Satellite) for them. The Olympics are one of the few exceptions.

I don't find it so great; it's more than double what I pay for Netflix or Lovefilm, and I seem to be getting more use out of them overall. There's some good stuff on BBC but not that many shows I'm that excited about.

Also, iplayer is not great. The whole business of having to watch shows within a week is, frankly, pretty lame.