Finally got my A into G and fixed up conflicts on my computer and managed to get Hotspot shield and Expat Shield working via dual boot on my computer.

Firstly I think I'm correct in assuming that Hotspot shield doesnt allow access to the UK ... can someone confirm this please as I cant connect to UK tv on mine... hence the dual boot.

Expat shield or UK tv is my main question. What exactly is available... obviously Ipayer and ITV and 4OD... in fact I can only access 4OD via their youtube channel rather than them direct. Maybe they are onto expat shields servers ? At least its working.

So what else can I get... I assume I can get sky catchup via my parents log in if I use their password codes... is there any other TV content I can access... IE: Virgin or anyother ? I'm not that familiar with all the TV content that is available in the UK currently.


Foxtel dish comes down within the next couple months for reno's and I'm going to use that time to wean our family off of local cable TV.... My real challenge is to make my system work easily for everyone, I dont fancy a constant earbashing from the females in my household. Funny thing is I know my 13 YO son wont moan... he will just keep going until he makes it work.

Got to set up ICE TV yet

Hotspot Shield gets you a US IP, so you can use hulu/pandora etc.

Expat Shield gets you a UK IP, so you can watch any UK web browser based streaming tele.

If you want to use something that isn't browser based, such as Spotify, you'd need to get a proper VPN service or have a lot of faffing around with tor onion proxies and sockcaps to allow the other bits and pieces use the connection.

Though torrent, nuff said.

I learnt today that Virginmedia charge for their online service. I'm using the free vpn until I'm absolutely sure everyone in my household will use the system. If it keeps lagging I'll change over.

The only thing I missed before was Channel 5... seems like I've got the whole lot bookmarked now.

Is The Dave channel native to Sky ?

Dont think I'll be overly relying on the tech stuff ..... Might have a butchers at Tor Onion later though dammit.

I prefer a system where you can browse the Programs you want to watch rather than aim for one via torrents.

the beeb were trying out a service that streamed other tv channels and put up their schedules, probably find info on it on the iplayer website...been a while since I bothered look at it though, but it seemed to work okay at the time.

I want to watch iPlayer etc on my iPad.

Anyone know how to get a uk IP on the iPad?

Edit - just googled it. Pretty easy, might set it up later

I have watched a couple of programmes on my laptop through a European site called watchseries. It's not too bad once buffered but it has hammered my download limit (which we didn't know about til we got here)........anyway around this??

I'm not a computer whizz btw, probably obvious to those who are

Downloads are the same size downloads wherever they come from, unfortunately. And everything goes through your service provider (ISP) so there is no way around it.

On UKNova (used for downloading torrents of programmes), for instance, you can sometimes choose between a Standard Definition (SD) edition and High Definition (HD), SD will help ease the use and on a small screen makes little difference to the viewing.

The usage limits in Oz do come as a surprise coming from the UK don't they? My advice is get a plan where you don't get charged for extra usage, just 'throttled down' to a lower speed for the rest of the month.

If you are into torrents this site may be useful if others fail (thanks Bob):
http://eztv.it/

Oh, and don't be afraid of torrents, they are quite simple once you get them set up

If you've got a bandwidth cap, there's no way around it except getting another ISP.

Even if you download v stream, you'd eat the bandwidth up.

That's true, we've got a 65" tele and unless you're sitting right up close, or watching sports, there's really very little point to the HD...well worth it for tennis and footie though as the fast action stuff is noticeable.

Often the ISP will have peak/off peak download limits. Its something of a joke, since peak is normal times, and offpeak is the middle of the night when nobody is awake. However if you do have his offpeak limit you can use it to download TV by only doing it during these hours - on several torrent trackers you can set up schedule hours to download.

Thanks guys all very helpful...thankfully we are not too bad once limit reached. Just slows down, no extra charges. Went with Westnet as the limit won't be affected when our son is on x box live....If his wifi connector or whatever it ever gets here!!