You also have to pay for the ABC and SBS in Australia - but that's hidden away in income tax rather than separate like in the UK (and other countries).

Right so let's start comparing the choice of tv channels based on the social services each country provides

All Hi fi will work fine.
Radios will work but nothing will be picked up on LW.
If you have a new tv a $70 HD set top box will make it work.
There is no tv license.
Lot of Uk tv shows shown on free to air but if you want your soaps you have to get Foxtel.
Corrie has been running for years on Foxtel and we are catching up with the UK very fast.
For Corrie watchers in the uk last night Molly and Tyrone were in a car crash
thats how far behind you we are.
Hope this helps.

In my opinion *most* people dont have foxtel. Lots of people have had foxtel at some point but dropped it because spending $100 a month on TV that is just as advert saturated and repeat riddled as free-to-air doesnt sit comfortably.

The only way to watch Australian TV (and its becoming ubiquitous) is via the magic of the internet. Make sure you have:
- a nice big disk (1TB external drives can be got for around $80 these days),
- a high volume ISP account (make sure its downloads only metering)
- appropriate outputs on your computer (HDMI/SPDIF/Composite Video/Line Out Audio - whatever your requirements are for your equipment)
- get accounts at some PRIVATE tracker torrent sites like xtremespeeds, thebox etc etc.

Once you have equipment set up so your computer can output to the comfort of the living room you *might* want the option of watching FTA tv from time to time - in which case adding a TV tuner card to your PC (<$100) and running MediaCentre is very straight forward (software comes free with Vista or Win7 - just learn to switch it on and configure it).

I dont know anyone in my workplace who DOESNT watch downloaded TV - and at least 75% of us run some kind of PVR/MediaCentre software to manage recording of FTA tv.

Theres a very good reason Australia leads the world in download TV piracy - and that reason is the dire service provided by the TV Networks.

All true. Only two of my friends have Foxtel and that's for their children. No one I work with has (or admits to having) Foxtel. Those who can have set up their computers to download and play to their plasma/lcd tvs. Now if only VividWireless can get their act together everything would be rosy.

except digital won't

I don't know anybody that doesn't have Foxtel.

Foxtel and the like are a dying business model. Soon there will be Facebook fan pages for "Bring back Foxtel" or "I love Tivo". Even Blockbuster are struggling at renting against the 'net.

I just wonder who's going to be the first of the big studios or production houses to bite the bullet and go global cutting out the middle men distributers (i.e. networks and cable providers).

If I could pay for (high quality 720p, 5.1DD minimum) downloads direct from HBO then they'd get money from me and thousands like me. As it is they get next to nothing from me. All they need to do is set up a serer farm with a big fat pipe to the internet and credit card processing capabilities and they're off.

The downside is of course that by setting up such a facility their 'product' would be worth less to the distributers who no longer have the illusion of 'exclusive broadcast rights' to their regions. As soon as the producers and of high quality TV and middle men distributers realise that the exclusive rights are being plundered on a MASSIVE scale and are in fact worthless - the sooner the world can get on board with a developing better business model mass circulation popular art.

Yeeeeeup ... I might be tempted by the sport but most of the (sports) stuff I like can be found to be streaming over t'internet anyway ... and there is always the 'do something else' option ...

I don't know anyone that does.

But I don't have any friends

I have it but only because Foxtel dropped the price from $60-odd to $21 when I told them I was cancelling.

If it wasn't $21 I wouldn't have it.

We haven't had tv connected (not even free to air) for a couple of years. We will hook the free to air backup when we get home because ABC Kids channel has some excellent shows (we're now hooked on Dance Academy). We have had Apple TV for years and everything we watch is watched via Youtube on our tv via apple tv, or downloaded and put onto the apple tv to watch on the big screen. I'm surprised that we don't actually miss having television connected. A lot of families we know are actually doing to same thing - Cartoon Network is a big waste of money - kids can go out for a swim, bike ride, practice music etc instead.