How To Watch Internet TV Across International Borders 206
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."
Re:Is that news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not per se: It's not novel to most slashdotters. it's news in that its happening at unprecedented levels to bypass the horrible media layers injected into a currently popular international event.
Here is my experience: Italy to the US (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is my experience: Italy to the US [blogspot.com]
Setting up is easy... the hard part is (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Another alternative is...change your DNS! (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Or just use Bittorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
There are *a lot* of people, expats and otherwise, that would be absolutely fine with paying for some sort of international license for the BBC. I see this "you're stealing BBC" crap from Brits, but they are not giving an option to us and we're asking for it.
Really necessary to proxy everything? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Is that news? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What slashdot reader is this written for? (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is D! Because the others are all make-believe!
C: Someone who accidentally stumbled onto slashdot today?
Not entirely true; I've hit /. with StumbleUpon before, so it's possible someone could very well accidentally stumble onto /.