Oyibopeppeh

get a Veeep before you leave. It'll cost you $50 for a year and save you loads of hassle, simple.

1967tazz

Thanks, so you don't go down the Bittorrent site idea???
Any particular Veeeeep site you recommend??

gottheTshirt

A completely different alternative which we use successfully in Riyadh is a slingbox.

1967tazz

Just when you think you have a handle on things.....
OK gottheTshirt, please whats a 'slingbox?'

james273

Laminia allows you to use UK, US or canadian IP's for about 8 quid a month. A lot cheaper if you take a longer subscription. Not sure if the website is blocked in Saudi.

Bob

Different purposes...torrents are good for things not live...veep better for sporting events.

Also, more to the point, it gets you onto sites which would other wise be blocked.

Brains1983

I have never got the hang of using/downloading torrents, and would consider myself tech-savvy!

I have however, found a decent VPN now though, everytime you log on, it let's you choose which country you want to be based in for that session. Not that I use it for anything than Iplayer, PKR and the occasional ham shank.

What about the slingbox, that's the thing you connect to the back of your sky box in UK, and it let's you watch it on another TV over tinternet? Can you use it to change channel aswell?

1967tazz

I am pleased that you are sorted.... but, any chance of telling who with? please.

Paracletus

Simples. Get uTorrent (a program (client)). Install.

Go to torrent sites, the famous Swedish site Pirate bay is a good start. Search for whatever you like, make sure that you read comments made and look at how many seeders there are on the file. The higher the better. 0 means, it's dead. Click download, and when prompted, select open with...option and select uTorrent. Click ok and your download starts. And voila, you have downloaded your first torrent...eventually.

Speeds in Bahrain are atrocious..I was getting used to my 1mb/s in the UK as well.

It might be worth 'avin a gander at the different torrent sites, there are quite a few.

melb_ksa

Err ... No they won't

On the subject of VPN, I've been a happy customer of www.unlock***.com for a while now (the last three letters are vpn). Works like a charm for Saudi. They have servers in US, Europe (both UK and elsewhere), etc.

Stealth Otter

I sorted out a veepee-n here in Saudi so don't panic, if you're using firefox as a browser it is is pretty straightforward and cheap to set up. What's more of an issue for i-player and other streaming sites is the internet speeds you get here although Mobily have got a decent 4g router now that seems to average at least 4mb - not good enough for HD streaming though.
I use torrents more than streaming because the constant buffering was driiving me mad; you'll find some torrent sites are blocked here...if you are going for the torrent option make sure you've got your security set up properly and that you've read up on using torrent and a veepee-n.

csdf

A VPN is useful no matter what, as lots of websites that you might consider innocuous (e.g. blogger.com, or flickr) can be blocked at a moment's notice and the VPN will let you view them anyway.

Tillybean

I use gate***.com and sorted it out over here. It lets me chose where I want to link via - tend to use the uk, and I can hook up my iplayer, torrents and any other websites I want to use easily.

For using with a Mac, I also had to download something else, but the very helpful chat at gate (based in Dubai) rang me and I got it sorted out over the phone.

Millsyisland

Definitely get a veepee-en before you leave as you'll be able to watch live bbc, itv etc, or stream programs direct from the iplayer etc (subject to sufficient internet speed) as opposed to having to download whatever you want to watch in advance.

csdf

Sorry for hijacking this thread, but can anyone with an existing VPN account in the UAE (preferably also using internet through Etisalat) run a speedtest at www.speedtest.net and post the results here? My 16 MB/s Etisalat connection drops to less than 1 MB/s using my current VPN and I'd like to see if this is just me or not.