Getting UK TV outside the country

[Timothy Murphy]

Any advice on how to get UK TV over the internet when outside the UK?

I asked on an iplayer mailing list, but was shot down as a criminal trying to drive the BBC into bankruptcy.

Actually, I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for the service. (I'd pay it to the BBC if I could.) Though I'd also like to get ITV as well.

Also, I don't mind downloading podcasts rather than seeing the program live.

I did see various sites in the UK offering some kind of proxy service. But they all seemed to require one to sign up for a year or so, and I have no confidence their service would work.

Any advice or suggestions gratefully received.

[Paul D Smith]

If by "outside the UK" you mean you are normally resident in the UK then something like a slingbox - perhaps not 100% koshe but you could make the case that you are paying the UK licence fee (which of course you would) and it was for personal use.

If you are not a UK resident the short answer is "no" unless you are close enough to receive from a UK transmitter.

I suspect any of the services you have found might be subject to closure at the first knock on their door by her majesty's constabulary.

Paul DS.

[Andy Burns]

If you have a base in the UK, a slingbox?

[sm_jamieson]

Of course you can. One of the many VPN providers. Usually about 10 quid paid monthly on credit card, e.g. supervpn, vypervpn. You can try it for just one month, then cancel (but they'll keep taking monthly unless you tell them). On vypervpn I can connect to a couple of US sites, germany, paris, London etc. I can watch french catchup TV (pluzz.fr, TF1 etc), hulu in the states etc. This would work whereever I was in the world (using PPTP protocol).

When you are connected to a certain contries VPN server, you are "in" that country.

Simon.

[Timothy Murphy]

Thanks for your response.

Actually, I do have a slingbox, but couldn't get it working reasonably well.

[Bill]

In message , Bill writes

OK scrap that idea, I really should have read what you had written, not what I thought you had..................

Idiot...........................

[The Other Mike]

Would this be 'live' TV or just prepackaged programme's a few hours afterwards?

If the latter then a UK centric torrent site. Some have the programme's available an hour or so after transmission.

[Timothy Murphy]

Thanks for your response.

Actually, I would like to get BBC, etc, in Italy.

In fact I have Sky in Dublin, and can get BBC on that with no problem.

As it happens, I can also get it with FreeSat, using a Lidl receiver with my Sky dish. (The dish is standard Sky size - I think the same as in the UK.)

Unfortunately, I cannot get BBC in Italy (Tuscany) though I have a dish (same size) there. It seems one needs a very large dish, I don't know why, as the satellite seems to be visible.

[Timothy Murphy]

Thanks, I'll try vypervpn. As I said, I looked at a couple of UK sites like that - I don't remember if vypervpn was among them - but there was a slightly shady look about those I saw, and I decided my credit card details might go astray.

I assume these people are breaking the law themselves?

Also, I wonder if VPN from the UK would be fast enough in Italy for live transmissions? If not, can you download podcasts or record in some way with vypervpn?

(I do actually have VPN on my computer in Italy, and have good communication with Dublin over that. Well, it has stopped working since the heavy snow in Italy a couple of weeks ago, I'm not sure why.)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Mate in S Spain gets the Astra group with a large dish. The footprint of the sat. is beamed to the areas it's designed to serve. But the cutoff isn't absolute.

[sm_jamieson]

Some look a bit shady. However I had no problem cancelling supervpn when th= eir french server kept going down.

I don't think so. A comment from somewhere:

just because media companies employ IP filtering based on location this doe= sn't mean that by-passing it via VPN or proxy would be illegal. In order fo= r it to be illegal, there must be a law making it a criminal offence to use= VPN or proxies for such purposes. There isn't one in Germany, or elsewhere= for that matter.

Media companies mainly use IP filtering to satisfy geographical rights issu= es. They buy (or sell) rights to certain TV shows to broadcast within a geo= graphic area.=20

I would have thought live streaming or catchup as iplayer would be similar = bitrates etc.

The VPN services are transparent just like your ISP is (well its possible s= ome could restrict some protocols). If you can do it from your home in UK, = you can do it connected to UK VPN from some other country.

There is another option: proxy services in your web browser. With that, oth= er connections like FTP etc. would not work.

Simon.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Sky dish.

I know someone who kept a mailbox in the UK and subscribed to Sky for years and years..from Tuscany!

Also possibly freesat - is that the same satelletite?

Check on what satellites do in fact work.

Buying a virtual private server in the UK and putting a proxy server on it is not so far fetched...I've actually done my own..

Never thought to make it a gateway for streaming Iplayer tho. Trouble is every man and his dog would use it..Hmm. Needs to be some form of password stuff I guess.

And no I am not going to offer it host it here..buy your own and break your own laws.. ;-)

[Mark]

you need a 300cm dish to get Astra 2D in Tuscany.

-

[The Natural Philosopher]

Whater my friend had for Sky wasn't that big..

Looked like 100 to me.

It wasn't very big, for sure.

Do sky broadcast BBC?

I know very little about satellite TV...

[Bill]

Unfortunately they adjust the coverage area, foot print, of the satellite so that it gives better coverage where they want it and not so good where they don't. Maybe to stop people in Italy watching the BBC, copyright and all that!

A very brief idea can be gleaned from this dish size map. Don't take this as gospel though, do a bit more research. Find out which services come from which satellite.

again for going off at a tangent, I totally misread your original post.

:-(

[Martin Brown]

Is there no local cable TV service that offers it?

It needs to be a fair bit bigger than that and more accurately pointed since you are well outside the primary beam footprint.

That's probably a bit pessimistic. Might be worth asking around locally to see if any expats can recommend a local smart satellite TV installer that can supply a moderately large dish and a better than average LNB.

[Brian Gaff]

Why internet?

If its in Europe then you can get it from the satellite. Brian

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Bill writes

Even if the signals from the satellite can be received strongly, way off-beam, the orthogonality of the vertical and horizontal polarizations can go awry, and separating the two can be difficult. This certainly caused problems in the 1990s in one south Mediterranean cable TV system (albeit it was with the analogue FM signals, which overlapped ).

[Adam Funk]

It's called "geolocation" and it's based on your IP address (not the domain name). Here's an example:

you use a VPN or TOR, the IP address that the remote server uses for this purpose is the address of the VPN server or TOR exit node.)

[tinnews]

So, when they have found the IP address what do they do with it? It only takes them to *another* domain name doesn't it?

E.g. if you look at zbmc.eu the associated IP address is 84.45.228.40 which takes you to enta.net. So my ISP is enta.net. Do they base "where I am" on the address in the Whois database for enta or what? Even that's a bit questionable, ADSL can go a long way!