[ruthyroo]

Yep. I miss my family & friends, but on Saturday night I really, really missed BBC Television!!! Oh to watch a film all the way through with no adverts... Jaws was on as the BIG movie this weekend on TVNZ (and yes you are right to shake your head in awe that a twenty year old film in the big attraction on a Saturday night - NZ tv and social life are that bad!)... we got so fed up with the ad breaks that hubbie timed them and worked out that the average film section lasted no more than 11.5 minutes... so a hour and a half film was stretched out to well over two hours... and the suspense was non-existent.

And I know that all you people to come will be thinking 'Ah but when I get to NZ I'll be so busy fishing / kayaking / swimming / tramping / bonding with my kids / experiencing the timeless wonder of nature / rejoicing in the glory of Godzone scenery etc etc - I won't care how rubbish the TV is'... wait till you've been here and it's rained for three weeks solid (as it has here in BOP and more to come for Xmas)... then you'll miss decent TV!!

Just a brief moan, I actually quite like it here.

[Caven]

Hi ruthyroo,

Oh God, that's going to wind me up! I go nuts watching Discovery when they stretch a 45 minute prog out to an hour, so a film would have me kicking the telly in...

Totally "agree-in-advance" about the weather keeping you in. I don't mind it, can't really, but getting the boss and little boss out in it is nigh on impossible. There's only so many times you can go to a museum... :uhoh

Anyway, onto the serious stuff. The Premiership. On Sky. Is the coverage good, any live games? Is there a danger, just as Alan Shearer is about to kick us into 4th place, that it will cut to a Pack 'n Save advert? I can't imagine where that might end...( :booby )?

Jaws as the BIG movie, what a laugh...what was on afterwards, Kojak?

[Wooba]

Ruthyroo,

If it makes you feel any better, there's an American station called Spike TV that has commercial breaks that are mind boggling. Every film they show is 3 hours long. I once jumped into the shower when the ads started and they were still going when I got back. No word of a lie.

I know what you mean though, the BBC is really great and you don't (well I didn't) appreciate it until you leave the UK.
Get yourself a good internet connection, you can download all the new shows from usenet :nice1

Darren

[richard]

I must admit the TV over here is dire. We have rented a TV whilst we wait for our stuff to turn up and in the first two weeks we had it it couldn't have been on for more than an hour. Even the kids couldn't find anything to watch and they used to have the TV on Sky morning noon and night in the UK if we let them.

I have started to watch the news at 6pm now (I prefer TV3's) and catch the odd film but that is pretty much it. :no

The Sky schedule didn't fill us with much enthusiasm so we haven't bothered with that either. Well actually that isn't entirely true as we ordered it through Telecom at the same time as ordering the phone line and broadband. After two weeks there was no sign of a Sky installer so we phoned back to be told the order had been lost and that as Sky now had a better deal we should phone them direct. We haven't bothered.

[SteveR]

:wah :wah :wah :wah :wah
warehouse, Noel leeming and Harvey Norman adverts!!!!!!!!!!!
they drive you crazy at least some of the Speights adverts are funny though.

and dont forget the money back guarrantee!

[veronica]

someone lent us a TV here about 4 months ago, they were so concerned we didn't have one and I think we have turned it on maybe 3 times. The Libraries are really good though so we have read masses.

[Diny]

Quote:

And I know that all you people to come will be thinking 'Ah but when I get to NZ I'll be so busy fishing / kayaking / swimming / tramping / bonding with my kids / experiencing the timeless wonder of nature / rejoicing in the glory of Godzone scenery etc etc - I won't care how rubbish the TV is'... wait till you've been here and it's rained for three weeks solid (as it has here in BOP and more to come for Xmas)... then you'll miss decent TV!!


That made me smile Ruthy ..... the amount of folks who claim they'll be out and about every hour God gives them ...... what a load of twaddle, after the initial spate of exploring and fact finding, I can almost guarantee that folks will fall into the usual routine of the working week, evening meal, TV in the evenings, weekends off, gardening, housework etc etc. Yeah I know that we're all heading off to a country that offers so much, but sometimes the idea of your feet up on the settee, good supply of snacks, bottle of wine and the TV remote just can't be beaten. Anybody who denies it is 'having a larrf'

Diny

[Danpoll]

Ruthryoo,

however bad it seems, however many ad breaks there are in NZTV and however bad it may seem. Surely you cant pine for the BBC. I am sure the beeb has now done away with using actors and writters and instead places suggestion boxes round shepards bush's cafes.

absouloute tripe.

So youre missing nothing, and I will be glad to cash in my TV licence when I leave.

Dan

[Iain & Liz]

I have never seen anything like it in my life
Even the news readers seem to be bored to death with it, i thought one was going to fall off his chair, and the ads are better then half the programs.
christmas eve we have titanic to look forward to.

[Danpoll]

is that the titanic with the alternate happy ending, just the thing for xmas eve.

now by my calculations this thread should give me my third plane.


Dan

[Diny]

Yep .... there's plane number 3 !!!!
:nice1

Diny

[tyagiuk]

I have never seen anything like it in my life
Even the news readers seem to be bored to death with it,

Just as we were coming back from holiday in NZ earlier this month, there was an article in the Herald about an outcry over one female newsreader who gets paid NZ$1million a year. Even the prime minister was outraged at this salary.

Personally I can't understand how any media person in a population of 4million people can be worth NZ$1million a year.

[jo b]

My brother-n-law never had a TV in NZ for over 10 years.

The only reason he 'borrowed' one was his dad was visiting from Uk and the cricket was on :eek no reason to get a telly me thinks.

well I agree nothng like curling up on the sofa for a good movie. I have lined up the rellies to keep me in supply of the DVD's they should play on the playstation 2 shouldn't they??

But I think that we watch too much TV over here especially mind numbing reality programs. Drive around Salford, Croxteh, some part of the undesirable UK if reality is what you want. Me I want to escape into soemthing that doesn't exist give me Xmen anyday :nice1

Jo

[Daniel Park]

Unusually, we're going to have access to a telly in NZ (borrowed) but we deliberately haven't had one in the UK for the past 7 years. So maybe terrible NZ telly will seem like the best thing ever...? Shortland Street, anyone? Ok, maybe not...

We haven't missed the telly here, not once. Definitely haven't missed paying a license fee to watch repeats of Some Mothers Do Ave Em. Seem to have too much to do to have time to watch anything.

Of course, when she gets the chance little 14-month-old seems to prefer telly to food, and certainly seems to prefer it to her parents. And "why don't you read a book or something?" doesn't wash with her...

Moving to NZ will be full of adjustments!

Dan

PS: although this post makes me sound like a curmudgeonly old git, I am in fact only 34.

[markkellaway]

Hi All,

Just realised that Diny is now a guru, is Moorf in danger of losing her crown? :laugh

Mark. :P

[Soon2baKiwi]

TVNZ and RTE (Irish national station) have soooo much in common. The common denominator is the population. They don't have the money to provide the programming that the BBC with its licence fee from such a huge population has. Also, all the decent people from here seem to end up over there anyway :? If we didn't have SKY, we would never watch TV and I've noticed that if we have anything else to do we don't watch it anyway. I stopped watching Corrie and Eastenders a while ago because there was always someone fighting and arguing and if you're not watching the soaps there doesn't seem to be a reason to watch tv.

[chips]

To be honest guy's , the T.V i can do with out, it's the radio i am going to miss- especially my beloved 5live :no .
11 days to go :raebanana .
Chips

[captainxmas]

And this fellow disciples is why God invented the (circle as applicable)

Playstation :? /Xbox :P /PC ;) /DubDubDub :clap /&...ENZ :cheers

[Jules]

I cant wait for my DVD's and Playstation to arrive, my leather settee's (we are sitting on camping chairs at the moment), my music CD's, ahh the list is endless.

Daytime TV is rubbish, I was stuck in doors yesterday as it rained all day :wah :wah what with Classic Coronation Street, Moonlighting and Days of our Lives :roll: :roll: and of course the lovely adverts "The Warehouse, the warehouse where everyone gets a bargin" :? I know most of them word for word.

Jules

[ruthyroo]

Don't even start me on the radio - I've nearly put myself in a ditch trying to find a decent station in the car! It's all 70's rock classics and pacific hiphop... can't find any decent news / current affairs at all, and nothing remotely approaching BBC 5live. Even Fred MacAulay / BBC Scotland is being thought of fondly (and that is really saying something!)

Dan - yep, I used to rant a bit about having to pay a licence fee for BBC rubbish, but it seems worth it now not to have every single programme you watch, including the news, interrupted by ads every 10 minutes.

Actually I don't watch that much tv - mostly do spend evenings and weekends kayaking, swimming, reading, playing on the PC, gardening etc etc. But as Diny says, sometimes you just want to curl up on the sofa with a glass of wine and a the remote. BTW Diny you are so right about getting back into the 'routine' - we have virtually the same routine as we had in the UK, except we can now supplement it by having a big house and garden to play in rather than a 1 bed top floor flat, lots of NZ wine to drink rather than cheap French plonk, and a stunning lake at the bottom of the road when we do feel like being energetic. But other than that it is work / feed / read / tv during the week - that's the reality of working full-time anywhere I guess. Haven't been to a hot pool or geothermal vent for weeks so officially not a tourist any more!

[Gran]

It may be a small consolation but we are in the Summer Season at the moment when we get repeats of dire programms rather than the originals. Winter is a little better. We used to pay $110 licence fee but the ads were still there.

[veronica]

On the subject of radio. If you listen to the car radio and you have a japenese car that is an import (is there any other sort here) it could be it has the original radio in it from Japan. These won't pick up many stations as they aren't totally compatible with the broadcasting here. They can be converted though. If you listen to the normal hifi type of radio you will pick up loads more stations and you may find something better that way. you can of course pick up some of the radio stations from overseas on the computor but I don't know how that works exactly.

[Wannaway]

Had to laugh at this thread - totally identify with what is said here.

Yep, TV is pretty crap here but er...think I was saying the same thing about that back in the UK! Thanks to the pernicious creep of Rupert Murdoch and S*y, I think the general quality of TV around the globe is now officially garbage.

You do get Coro :cheers and Eastenders :wah here. Christmas TV was totally rubbish, but again was it any better back in the UK? It is summer here (wel, supposed to be), so I guess they think we will all be outside enjoying the sun (or dodging the showers more likely at the moment). UKTV did have a Blackadder marathon on during Christmas Day, where they played all the episodes back to back, so that helped to pass a few hours. Unfortunately the next day was a Mr Bean marathon - I bet the crime rate soared on that day!

As for radio, a guy I work with who is a Kiwi but has just come back from spending two year in Ireland confirmed my worst fears, they are all crud. If you like Celine Dion, Phil Collins etc :eek :eek :eek , you'll be fine. However, if you actually like music, well you'll just have to buy a car with a CD player in it!

We have taken basic Sky package just to give us a wider range of garbage to choose from, but more importantly because it is the only way we could get a decent reception to view said garbage. Still I like it - it reminds me of when I was growing up in the 70's!

Lee

[RoadRunner]

Most US TV is garbage, too, with more (and longer) commercials on network TV every year (I think there is about 18 minutes of actual show during every 30 minute period).

The one redeeming feature of US TV is the pay channels - like HBO (great original series and movies). Can you get HBO in NZ?

Another nice feature is the DVR (digital video recorder). The cable companies provide a free DVR and you pay a US$10 monthly fee to be able to digitally record about 100 hours of shows/movies (TIVO-like capability). You can fast forward through commercials and pause live TV (great for sports shows). Does SKY TV or any other satellite company provide such a service?

[DrPhred]

Ohh, good question. I'm a bit addicted to my DirecTV with TIVO. I'd have trouble going back to watching live tv again.

Well, as long as I have broadband, there is allways Bit Torrent...