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How To Watch Internet TV Across International Borders
colinneagle writes "Living in the U.S., one of my greatest regrets is that I can't watch BBC video with iPlayer. If I were living in the U.K., I'd feel the same away about not being able to watch shows on Hulu. But, with a Web proxy or a virtual private network (VPN) and an IP address in a country where the content is available, you can watch these shows. Technically, it's easy to set your browser up to use a Web proxy or VPN software. With a Web proxy and Windows XP, for example, you just go to Internet Options, click the Connections tab, and then click LAN Settings. Next, under Proxy server you click to select the 'Use a proxy server for your LAN' check box. Finally, you enter the IP address of the proxy server and in the Port box, type the IP number that is used by the proxy server for client connections—that's usually 8080. It's usually pretty simple to do that in any browser and operating system. There are also programs, such as Proxy Switchy, for Chrome that makes it easy to switch from one proxy to another in a single session. When you use a proxy, though, all your traffic is still open to network administrators. If you want to visit another country and watch their TV in privacy, you'll need a VPN."
Really?
What slashdot reader is this written for?
A: Someone who doesn't know what a proxy is, or how to set one up?
B: Someone who isn't wise enough to google how to watch internet media that is region blocked?
D: Gnomes
C: Someone who accidentally stumbled onto slashdot today?
The answer is D! Because the others are all make-believe!
Here is my experience: Italy to the US
Next thing you know we'll have all the bullshit that goes along with ask.com and ehow.
Yes. I use a VPN here in the UK and I can access Hulu.
Your mouse. How to move it left and right AND up and down on your screen.
No, I can't confirm it, but I will call your bluff:
As long as the VPN isn't blacklisted, it should work. If it doesn't, then there is a technical problem that can be fixed.
Now, the reality is that IP addresses or ranges that become known as VPN providers will become quickly blacklisted.
Here's a case where it should work and will very likely NOT become blacklisted:
You subscribe to a service that lets you see Cable TV on any device on your LAN, or you put a TV card on your home computer. You then put an inbound VPN on your LAN. You go on vacation abroad. You tunnel in and watch American TV from Britain or, if your home is in the UK, you watch BBC in America. Not only is this unlikely to be spotted, but since you are already a paying customer, it's unlikely to make anyone want to shut you down as long as you keep it to yourself.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
... WTF is this "story" about (beside the obvious) and how is this news for nerds?
Set up your over-the-air TV antenna close to the US border.
Oh wait, if you are like most Canadians, you probably do that already.
*cue rim-shot*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Of course sometimes you can just set the X-Forwarded-For attribute in your browser to an IP address inside the country. A fair amount of web servers are set up to blindly trust it. A lot cheaper than a proxy when it works.
If you're going to steal BBC Video (since you never paid the TV tax), then you might as well do it the easy method and just do a torrent download.
To be honest though I've not really found much on BBC I wanted to watch. "Doctor Who" and "BBC News" is the only thing that comes to mind and both of those I can get legally (via Syfy or PBS). Plus there are other alternatives like France24, NNK-japan, and RT which come free through my antenna.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The last time I tried the problem was in the flash players/plugin making direct connections to content by ignoring the http_proxy settings of the browser. Setting the default route to the VPN made it work, long story short: proxy settings in browser might not be enough.
finding a decent open proxy. They go down all the time with no warning. So pay up and get a commercial account or be prepared to make open proxy hunting a part of your daily/weekly routine.
I used to play a MMRPG that banned my entire continent's IP... I still remember the feeling of joy upon finding a fast open proxy outside my banned zone!
Some people might find this useful, so let's not get too carried away with our technical superiority. If you don't find the story informative, don't read it.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people on messageboards will weight in on a topic that they're not interested in just to say "I'm not interested in this topic." On /. we seem to have people who do nothing but post inane comments about how they're not interested in a particular story, usually in the Idle section. I find it amusing because clicking two buttons to post a reply was an even bigger waste of their time than the few seconds they spent reading the summary.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Maybe they're saving the torrent tutorial for next week's filler article.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Personally I have a VPS in every country I want to get content from. I have a US VPSs, for Netflix, Pandora an whatever else. I have a UK VPS for BBC iPlayer, Channel4 and so on. Cheap as chips generally. I think my UK one cost $30 a year! Sell the service to my friends, and bingo I've made my money back, and I don't have to worry (too much) about some third party stealing all of my traffic
http://unblock-us.com/ is what I have been using. They have a free trial and the experience has been pain free. Long term cost would be $4.99 / mo
I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it just does! (Can someone chime in on how they do it without a VPN??)
$.02,
-TJJ
people in the office stared as I let out a hearty "guffaw"
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I watch TopGear as often as I can thanks to BBC America (the original BBC version, not the wretched, bastardized, hillbilly, neck of red American version). I'm a fan of Jeremy Clarkson on the show, love his wit and overall disdain for American cars.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Dear Slashdot,
I've been doing exactly this for, oh, I dunno, 8 or 9 years. I even have several fellow /.ers as clients on my VPN/proxy/privacy service. Thank you, Soulskill, for this lovely little time capsule from 2004.
Stay tuned for our next story, where a young startup named Apple plans to change the world with a new kind of graphic calculator, tentatively called "Newton".
-Billco, Fnarg.com
There are also programs, such as Proxy Switchy
Proxy switchy gets angry on my desktop linux box, recently it starts whining because its not on gnome or kde and refusing to work, for not apparent reason other than it would be fun to complain. Too bad, before they put that detection code in proxy switchy it worked perfectly.
Anyone have a suggestion for an alternative that is less buggy, or at least does not have that bug?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
When I spent some time in Japan, I didn't watch any American TV and nothing bad happened. The USA was still there when I came back, and it turns out that I didn't miss any shows worth watching (and most of what I would have watched is on Netflix anyway).
Wouldn't this have been a better post if it included a list o open VPN and Proxy services for each country?
It all starts at 0
i use tinyproxy to watch hulu.com. the configuration is trivial, you just need to make sure you
comment out these:
AddHeader "X-My-Header" "Powered by Tinyproxy"
ViaProxyName "tinyproxy"
uncomment and set this:
DisableViaHeader Yes
the rest of my config is almost unchanged.
The BBC is made from British taxpayer money, for British citizens. Where is the problem with that? I don't get it. Especially since they have plenty of stuff available for international audiences.
Would Slashdot also run a story about a hack that gets one subscriber status on Slashdot without paying? If some other big site did, how many Slashdotters would utterly pee themselves?
2 years ago I decided that I wanted to view stuff through the BBC's iPlayer, forgetting that most of the good stuff from the BBC makes it here, and what doesn't make it here tends to be the dregs. Anyway, I found an open proxy in the UK and was barely able to get video across it. That was just the starting point. From there I looked at all of the HTTP communications (with Live HTTP Headers) and using FoxyProxy was able to just have certain pieces of data going through the proxy. I narrowed it down to just a few small HTTP communications that were being checked for location, and just proxied those. I got good streaming video after that because the actual video was being served up by Akamai. I wound up being served BBC video content from a server in Arizona.
Given that BBC America has most of the better stuff from the BBC, I haven't bothered messing with that kind of thing in several years.
This kind of thing may not work now, but it's worth checking to see just how much data really does have to be proxied/vpned if you are doing that kind of thing.
Since I like to watch UK streaming tv, I signed up with a VPS provider who along with their US datacenters, has a datacenter in the UK, and added a UK VPS to my account, along with the two others I have in their Dallas DC. An install of OpenVPN and Squid on the Ubuntu 10.04 OS and I'm off to watching UK TV. So far, its worked perfectly. I'm loaning it currently to friends who are rabid Olympics fans. Oh and the good part? The VPS is an OpenVZ 512mb container, choice of all sorts of Linux distros, and with 300GB/mo transfer, 15GB of diskspace, and costs me a whopping $5.95/mo. The two I have in Dallas are also $5.95/mo. As soon as $$$ are a bit looser in my wallet, I'm planning on going with the $59.95/yr plan on the two Dallas slices... Google ThrustVPS.. Don't have any financial ties to them, just been a customer for nearly two years and very happy with their service...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Where is the problem with that
I've always viewed one of government's roles is to provide necessary services to the population that would not be accomplished without its intervention. Construction of roads is a necessary service. "Dr. Who" is not.
but geo-location blocking by the NHL is pretty much my last hurdle before cutting the cable cord.
The NHL offers a service called Gamecenter Live that allows you to stream live games to a computer or certain STBs. All games except those from within your broadcasting region. For me, it's the Canucks as I live in Vancouver.
I can't watch the Canucks live over this service because of the blackout restrictions imposed by the NHL. And they even have terms in their contract stating that if you use technical means to bypass the lockouts, ie VPN or proxies, they can terminate your service with no refund.
I want to send the following message to the NHL:
*Assuming you give a shit about the cable companies or sports networks.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
Wait, there is a slashdot article on the front page detailing how to violate various broadcasters copyrights? I mean, I know it's preaching to the choir, but I'm astounded this is an actual article.
IPlayer in particular isn't region-locked because the BBC hates foreigners; the service is paid for by television licenses, which people outside of England (obviously) aren't paying. It's much more than just defeating a region-locking scheme, it's basically piracy. Seeing it front and center is crazy.
Tax? i thought it was a licence fee, and you get iplayer access in UK irrespective of if you pay or not, and don't outsside the UK irrespective of if you pay or not.
Max.
If your proxy is detectable, then you aren't doing it right.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, particularly as this hack circumvents the need to pay for international iPlayer, where you pay a monthly fee for access to iPlayer programmes.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Licens fee, taxes -- same difference? Though thanks for the correction, that was sloppy of me.
When you happen upon the browser of a slashdot subscriber, you can see stories before they go live, even though you're not the one who subscribed!!!!111. Clearly the approach isn't perfect, so even though it has decent motives at heart, pirate away.
See what I did there?
And yes, I'm a hypocrite, I downloaded a few Dr. Who seasons a few years ago, I just couldn't stop watching.. but I didn't feel entitled to it, I was fully aware I was "stealing". I still see a difference between what I do because I'm weak or an asshole, and openly advocating it. Interwebs, grow the fuck up.
Well, strictly speaking, nothing is "necessary", you always have to qualify with "necessary for X". E.g. Roads are necessary for driving cars, which in turn is necessary for disease, pollution and slavery, while Dr. Who is necessary to learn about sonic screwdrivers.
Are governments allowed to assess a tax (or fee) outside of their own territory?
Yes.
Long Answer:
The US routinely assess taxes on its citizens everywhere in the world (it is one of the only, if not the only, country to do this to its citizens). When I lived in the UK I had to file returns in both countries. Had I lived in Hong Kong or Switzerland, I would have had to pay the difference between their tax rate and the higher US tax rate to Uncle Sam.
As far a fees go, just about anyone who has applied for any kind of visa will be able to attest that governments routinely charge fees outside of their borders. Visit any US consolate abroad to apply for an immigration visa to the US, or any other country's consulate abroad for the same purpose.
So yes, governments can and do assess taxes AND fees outside of their borders. I think it would be perfectly fine for the BBC to sell their service to viewers abroad...except they probably made the mistake of buying some of their content from other studios, and are prevented from doing so by the usual "splinter the market" contractual clauses that stem from the same outdated mindset that has given us region encoded DVDs and Blurays.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And remember this is a very American thing to do. First you surrender completely to corporatism so your televised coverage of international events is abysmal. Then you absolutely refuse to be taxed at any level that would create a publicly-minded entity that provided vastly superior coverage to that corporate entity. And then you freeload on the infrastructure paid for by other taxpayers in other countries that aren't quite as shortsighted, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the system they paid for.
People don't come to Slashdot for the stories. They're badly written, usually days behind the mainstream and other tech media and frequently misrepresent stuff.
People come to Slashdot for the comments.
I don't want to read comments from people too fucking stupid to use Google to work out how to set up a proxy. I don't expect regular readers of Slashdot to need to use Google to find out how to set up a proxy.
I don't understand why this story exists. I'm reading it for the comedy value, and so that I can help feed back to Slashdot admin that dumbing down the content on Slashdot will be a great way of killing the site.
who do use proxy' to see Iplayer, you can get live feeds for all the free (in the UK) OTA digital channels at http://tvcatcup.com/
http://chimpbox.us
I have been using vps's for a very long time. Recently I added 2 new ones, one in the UK and one in Germany, in addition to my existing US one (which I will be switching soon to a cheaper one).
The US one I have been using for years is somewhat pricey, at around $25 a month, as an early adopter one gets to pay a premium. However I have looked recently and found much cheaper ones (I only need a basic VPS).
I run openvpn on the US based VPS, with the UK and DE ones connecting to it as a client (In addition to my home gateway connecting to it as well).
On the VPN server, I have routes set based on on the various IP databases (RIPE in the case of EU), those get pushed out to the clients. Completely transparent to the laptops, smartphones and desktops in my home, if I go to say bbc.com I get routed out the UK VPS.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Also, nerds don't care about sports and don't watch Olympic games.
So, in short, flash is problematic?
No news here either.
People don't come to Slashdot for the stories. They're badly written, usually days behind the mainstream and other tech media and frequently misrepresent stuff.
People come to Slashdot for the comments.
I don't want to read comments from people too fucking stupid to use Google to work out how to set up a proxy. I don't expect regular readers of Slashdot to need to use Google to find out how to set up a proxy.
I don't understand why this story exists. I'm reading it for the comedy value, and so that I can help feed back to Slashdot admin that dumbing down the content on Slashdot will be a great way of killing the site.
Ooooh, you're so superior! Look at you! I'll bet there never was a time when you had to learn how to do a Hello World prompt.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
A Hello World prompt? Never done one. It's not a prompt.
I wrote my first Hello World application 28 years ago. I don't expect Slashdot to teach me. I don't expect Slashdot to teach anybody.
I do expect Slashdot to link to Hello World in 441 different languages. Here, have a peek: http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm
Notice the difference. You're expecting Slashdot to treat you like an idiot. I'm assuming the reader is familiar with Hello World and drawing their attention to something fun that a number of other people have put together, that's also educational, that they might enjoy contributing to.
Is that being superior? Really?
Yes. Smug. Arrogant. Superior. I'll bet you get a huge erection from posting about your superiority on /.
Drill baby drill - on Mars