The problem with most media sites is that they look at your IP address before deciding what you can watch online. More accurately they look at WHERE your IP address is registered to. This can cause loads of problems trying for instance to watch UK Television in the USA or accessing sites across geographic areas, even though this is the internet! Some sites like search engines use this in a helpful way to tailor your search results, so that you don’t end up with a plumber who lives on the other side of the planet when you type “local plumber” into Google.
So that’s fine but unfortunately that’s about the only plus point. More often it’s used to block access so if you want to watch US TV stations online from Europe or UK TV in the US then you’ll be out of luck.
Here’s an example of the sort of screen that you’ll get if you do try and watch British TV …..
You’ll get the same sort of thing if you try and access NBC, ABC, Hulu or even Pandora from anywhere outside the USA. It can get really annoying especially if you travel a lot and find yourself blocked from your favorite sites just because you happen to be in a different country briefly.
Fortunately it is possible to bypass these blocks, in fact a whole little mini industry has built up into allowing unfettered access to these sites.
So How to Watch UK TV in USA?
Well just to take this for an example, although the same applies to nearly every single media site on the planet. We’ll just use Identity Cloaker to access the BBC to illustrate. The trick is to fool the web site into thinking your in the United Kingdom. This can be done by connecting via a proxy server which hides your IP address.
Here’s what I do –
This is the little front end of Identity Cloaker which gives you access to the proxy server. The important thing to remember is to click a UK one as that will give you a UK IP address. In this screen you scroll down and look for a UK server that has the quickest speed to your relative location. You can also access sites in the USA, France, Germany, Canada, Netherlands and a few more countries just by picking the correct flags.
This will then allow you to reconnect to the BBC web site and allow you to watch the UK TV stations from anywhere in the world. One of the advantages of using Identity Cloaker is that it is very easy to use, you don’t have to set up these connections manually as most of the companies do.
Anyway if you want to see it demonstrated – here’s a short video (sorry about the quality!)
It’s also available on YouTube entitled – BBC Iplayer USA, I hope people find it useful.
Unfortunately now, a lot of the sites won’t work with just a proxy server – although currently the most popular one the BBC works fine. Many sites you’ll need to connect using something called a VPN (Virtual Private Network). All sounds a bit complicated but it’s not really – but first check this next paragraph
STOP – If you travel with work and connect back to your office using some connection icon, there’s a very good chance you are already using a VPN maybe to access your email system. So if you’re working for a company in the UK just connect back to this and then try and access the BBC whilst you’re connected. Same goes for any other country, if you connect to your base first you should have an IP address from that country. Bigger companies have VPNs in lots of countries so check with your IT department first – might save yourself some money!
Anyway if you’re not lucky enough to have a work server to connect to, here’s the Identity Cloaker VPN mode –
Just click the button and it allows you to login via a VPN. and you’ll be able to watch British TV online without a problem. The major difference being that all your traffic is funneled down an encrypted tunnel and so is much more difficult for the web sites to detect. There are a few UK TV stations that need this mode like Channel 4, Channel 5 and RTE player (this one you need to use the Irish server though)
So there you go that’s how you can watch UK TV in any country at all, your location doesn’t matter. There’s loads of services out there now including some neat new methods like using a DNS proxy , but I really can recommend Identity Cloaker, they’ve been around a few years and don’t charge per server like most of the companies. There’s a very cheap trial for 10 days for a few dollars here, Identity Cloaker’s – try it first to see how it works for you.
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