TV elsewhere?

[about using a VPN to watch British TV]

Perhaps Rick knows something about this.

My source of broadcast television is a satellite dish. Freesat, but then I don’t watch much these days (I think ESC and Dr Who account for pretty much everything I’ve watched this year).

My animé fix is via horriblesubs (I’d use Crunchyroll but the only thing they’re capable of streaming without endless buffering is the advertising).

There’s a brilliant NHK series on trains on YouTube (“Railway Journal”). Loads of episodes, just under a half hour each. ;-) (episode one)

And I pick up cheap DVD box sets when supermarkets are offloading stock. I really liked “Scorpion” (cost a fiver), I’m going to hit Amazon in the new year for season two. I would like to like “Elementary” (six euro), Lucy Liu as Watson is genius, but the Sherlock character is so bloody annoying. Then there’s the season one box set of “Veronica Mars” that I got at a boot sale for a single euro. Liked it so much that I went to Amazon and got the “everything” box set (seasons 1 to 3 and the film) on promotion, half price. I’m watching that now. Oh, and I need some more “New Girl” because… Come on, Zooey Deschanel with a fuzzy sweater and big glasses? Isn’t that reason enough?
And “Shikaku Tantei Higurashi Tabito” was a fansub. I think that covers most of what I have watched recently.

[about using a VPN to watch British TV]

Perhaps Rick knows something about this.

My source of broadcast television is a satellite dish. Freesat,

I think the VPN is an effort to present a non-UK IP connected device via a UK IP and thus be seen by the sending system as a UK listener/viewer so that non-UK audience don’t get free access.¹

Woudn’t surprise me if they started getting you to identify specific users or premises so they can check you have the broadcast receiver licence.

¹ Being a UK resident I have nothing to fake and therefore near zero knowledge.

Doesn’t the BBC catch up service require you to log in (with licence number?) now?

I remember reading that that was going to happen, but I’m not sure whether it did or not.

I just tried it myself and it told me that I can’t access it from outside the UK. I also tried Channel 4 but it complained that I don’t have Flash installed (in 2017!).

ITV needs Flash to watch live, but the on-demand stuff appears to work without it.

In the land down under we don’t have licenses (although I suspect there is a law on the books somewhere), but our content is geoblocked I believe. I think it’s both because of the muddy waters of licensing permissions etc. for particular countries and bandwidth costs.

Proxies can also work to circumvent geoblocking. There’s always a way.

For example, I wanted access to indie content on the XBox360. I created a U.S. account for that and had to buy credit via a reseller so I could purchase indie games.

Most video streaming sites like Hulu etc. can be gained access to via a proxy.

Some things like the good version of Netflix tend to need a VPN to access them.

Chris, there are still lots of things that are still unfortunately reliant on Flash. Sometimes there’s a workaround. Sometimes it’s just easier to use an Android app. Sometimes, nothing will work.