Often the expense and time involved in setting up to watch BBC abroad is massive. Big Satellite dishes, motors, satellite boxes, subscriptions, engineers & installation fees, it goes on. All the BBC abroad is available for free over the internet via BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five. BBC and ITV have all their live channels broadcasted in HD so there is real TV experience or watching programmes on demand so you don’t miss a thing. A laptop is also very easy to connect to TV. All TVs and computers have ports that easily allow a cable or wireless connection that output exactly what’s on the computer screen. Therefore, one can watch BBC abroad sitting at home.
But, there now exists a simple, fast and light weight solution – Internet TV. The requirements are: high speed internet connection (minimum 1 mb), a computer (laptop, PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad or Smart phones) and a VPN (Virtual Private Network) account. The reason why BBC iplayer is funded by the UK TV license; if the TV license is not applied for and paid, then there is no right to watch BBC iplayer abroad. What the BBC site does is checking the location of computer through its IP address. Every device connected to the Internet has an IP address given to it, this address has a physical location attached to it. So if the spectator is overseas the IP address discloses to all about it.
All that is required is to fool the system, thinking as if the user is located in the UK; here the UK IP address is required.
The two main methods are with a proxy server, where all traffic is essentially filtered and sent via another computer OR with a Virtual Private Network, which goes a step further and essentially replaces local ISP with a different connection.
There is no reason to know anything about either, they can both be used to watch BBC iPlayer abroad, and VPNs have the slight advantage in that they allow to download shows from BBC iPlayer as well as watching them live.
Author is an executive with bbc player. For more information on bbc iplayer visit our site.
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