Love it or hate it, the one thing you can say about UK TV is that it is one of the main things that British expats seem to miss when abroad for any length of time. UK television does possess qualities that compel some Brits abroad to find ways to continue watching it. Whether it is the addictive nature of the soap operas, following the progress of sports teams or keeping up with the news, Brits do like to watch UK TV abroad.
Fortunately in the modern connected world, watching UK TV abroad is quite feasible with nothing more than a laptop computer or smartphone and a decent broadband connection. However the UK broadcasting authorities have thrown up one additional little hurdle commonly known as geo-blocking.
Geo-blocking means that when you try to access UK TV from abroad online you are going to get a message telling you that the programme is not available in your area. This is because a computer accessing the internet from anywhere in the world is assigned a numerical address known as an IP address intended as a means of recognising and locating an individual computer. Stored on a central database, particular numerical sequences are assigned to individual countries. In this way it is easy to develop software that blocks access to a website or service from certain geographic locations.
In order to watch UK TV abroad it is necessary to make your computer appear as if it is accessing the service from a UK IP address. This is very easy using a connection known as a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection. Basically this is a direct connection to a UK based server via an encrypted tunnel. Although it sounds very complicated, this is in fact very easy to do and there are many VPN companies who for a monthly fee will allow you to access a UK based server and supply a small piece of software to set the connection up for you.
Once connected to the server all of your internet traffic is routed through it and picks up the UK IP address assigned to the server. You then find that when you access UK TV online you no longer get the “not available in your area” message as you appear to be based within the UK.
What is the legality of this and are there any licencing issues? It is perfectly legal to use a VPN connection and providing you are watching catch-up TV rather than live – you do not need a TV licence.
The catch-up services such as BBC Iplayer, 4OD, ITV Player and Demand 5 are a very convenient way to watch UK TV online. Recently broadcast programmes are made available online to watch for up to a month after they have been broadcast. This gives you the freedom to watch what you want when you want rather than suffering irrelevant live programming whilst waiting for the programme you want to watch. Think of it as your own very large video collection of previously broadcast programmes.
As with all things, you need to practice due diligence when choosing a company to supply your VPN connection. Some of them have a tendency to overload their servers with users thus slowing down the connection which in turn causes buffering and disrupts the viewing experience. You also may want to use a company that will give you a free trial connection to test the process and make sure it works for you.
One of the best mainstream VPN companies out there who offer a free trial and an excellent on-going support service is a company called Speedytv. This is a top recommend for those of you wishing to access UK TV abroad
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