Why can't I watch UK TV from another Country ?



Posted: Tuesday, September 15, 2009

by Neil Simpson
http://www.ngbconsult.co.uk

If you have ever tried watching Tv from one of the UK Channels abroad, you've probably been out of luck. There are various commercial and regulatory reasons that the channels block all viewing from outside the UK.  In fact UK TV are not alone as the same thing happens with many other commercial stations across the planet.

I'm afraid incredible media channels such as Hulu, NBC, Pandora and many more all block access over the internet unless you're watching from their home country.  My friend even complained that he couldn't access the Gaelic football on RTE when he was in the UK - barely an hours flight away (in fact for one game he did actually fly back to Dublin to watch  the game on TV!)

SO how are they doing this, well there are variety of technologies involved depending on the station and the media player being used.  But in the very simplest form they are simply using geolocation, to find out where you are accessing from.  It's all down to your IP address, our individual address on the internet that identifies where you are.  Each IP address is registered to a particular provider often an ISP or a datcentre, which is then classified by country.  

Then when you try to access any UK TV like the BBC IPlayer from say France, then your address will be looked up in this database and if you're registered outside the UK you'll get a blocked message.  Now this system is definitely not perfect, for instance some of these database which list the IP addresses are out of date so it can be incorrect.  I know of many people in different countries who can access BBC Iplayer without any modifications.

But for the rest of us, who wish to access some of the wonderful content of the BBC, completely devoid of commercials then we have to bypass this geolocation and make our IP address appear from the UK.   

It's not that hard, you can find more information here.


Watch UK TV and specifically the BBC Iplayer
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)
» left by Ben Morrish
 2 years 237 days ago.
48 fans.
Interesting read! Its about time the media industry woke up to the fact that now the Internet is here, everything is going global. People don't want to find they can only access certain content in certain countries - they want it available to them wherever they happen to be.
 
Proxies make it easy to bypass their restrictions anyway, so they really should get together and work out the copyright issues so that they can make content available globally
» left by Neil Simpson 2 years 217 days ago.
Thanks Ben, I agree but the internet is becoming increasingly segmented. Whether for copyright issues or just plain censorship. Social networking sites in many countries are getting blocked because one or two opinions expressed on them. It's like closing a library because you don't like one of the books in it!!
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