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Comment by rdudek | Hacker News Reader

Is this only for satelite TV service providers or cable too? Also, is this strictly a UK thing? I have not noticed anything similar in the US but from what I can tell, all the bars I go to all have Comcast boxes. And a lot of times, you can see a rack of Comcast equipment stacked up either behind counters or right at the entrance behind the person that checks people in.

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Comcast charges $34.95/mo for a sports pack for bars and restaurants: http://business.comcast.com/tv/restaurants/plans-pricing

...but only $8.95/mo for the same sports pack for waiting room TVs and other "office" uses: http://business.comcast.com/tv/offices/plans-pricing

Because Comcast uses cable (instead of satellite), they actually have two-way communication with most of their equipment. And even one-way-only equipment (like CableCard and DTA) can still be restricted to only work on the encryption keys for a very small geographical area. If Comcast equipment is moved to a location other than the address where it's supposed to be, it usually won't work.

For what it's worth, a lot of bars and restaurants use DirecTV (it has popular exclusive sports packages). Even though it's satellite-based, I've never noticed any sort of "pub glass" or the licensing indicator. So I'm not sure how they enforce licensing.

The link you pasted says it's actually $189.95/month for the sport pack.

Also, this is aside from any premium sports subscriptions like NHL/NBA League Pass/NFL Sunday Ticket channels, which charge based on the occupancy of the bar/restaurant and costs thousands of dollars per year.

There have been a number of courtcases involving pub owners and tv sports rights owners.

Some people wanted to use domestic contract for their pubs. Other people bypassed local providers and used their satellite dishes to receive foreign broadcasts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25849670

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17150054

None of this has anything to do with TV licences.

This particular approach is strictly a Sky (UK) thing, although I believe that Sky in other countries (e.g. Germany, Italy) adopt a similar technique.

UK cable operators don't sell commercial subscriptions to premises, so the pint glass doesn't apply, although the surprise numbers are still present, to catch any unauthorised streaming.

Most likely a UK thing. There is some odd stuff there when it comes to TV and "licenses"

It's the noun, so "\"licences\"".

Sky is a private business, so the arrangement here is an ordinary licencing arrangement between one business and another. If you pay £25/mo, or whatever, Sky give you the right to watch men kicking a ball about at home; if you want to show the same thing to paying customers, on the other hand, you need to be paying more. Sky pay through the nose for the rights to all this nonsense and they have to make the money back somehow.

The TV "licence" (a tax, pretty much) is separate matter.

According to my dictionary "license" is also used as the noun (equivalent to "licence") in American English.

My dictionary may be wrong, though.

The entire point is that the TV licence is a UK thing ;)

But if we were talking about the colour of the BBC logo, would you correct Americans who say "color"?

Honest question. I'm a non-native speaker, but my understanding has been that you only keep the original spelling for proper names and terms of the trade (i.e. anything you wouldn't translate if it was non-English, like "Grand Prix" in sports or "vert" in heraldry).

My comment wasn't entirely serious. But it seems that "TV Licence" actually is written that way, capitalization and all - see, e.g., https://www.gov.uk/tv-licence) - suggesting it is a technical term.

Not really, we have it in Italy too, but it shows a martini glass.

Sorry I can't find a picture, but it looks like this one http://business.sky.it/statics/images/business/Bar/offerta_b...

Ireland & Germany also have (ish) TV licences

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