Raffin

Just to report about a couple of weeks of research and some trials I have made of various services aimed at enabling those outside the UK to watch UK TV online. Various free VPN (Virtual Private Network) services are around but I found they mostly have serious drawbacks and irritations in their use eg advertisements, complicated set up and operation, regular disconnections and poor video playback. Nearly an exception is CyberGhost5, but it just didn't have a consistently good video playback.
When it comes to paying for these services there are are one or two priced at around 20 or 30 pounds a year which did the job reasonably well at times but not consistently. A good example is the US based Private Internet Access. They have a large number of servers in many countries, including the UK in London and Southampton. But I found that all their London servers were blocked for BBC TV, while some of their Southampton servers were also blocked. One did not have a choice amongst the servers in Southampton when one connected, so it was somewhat hit and miss. When I complained they were not so interested.
Going up to 40 to 50 pounds annually there are a number of good choices. Some are based outside the UK eg Eastern Europe, USA and some are based in the UK. The latter aim their services partly at British holidaymakers who want to keep up with Eastenders on the beach in Tenerife and also at British expatriates. Just perm any three or four out of "Watch" "UK", "British", "TV", "Expat", "Anywhere" etc and you can easily find a score of these confusingly similarly named operations on a search.
I decided that the latter operations were to be preferred as they are partly aimed at people who do have a UK TV licence and who want to watch British TV abroad on holiday. The operator would therefore be keener on properly maintaining a UK service as broadcasters find more ways to block geographically. And also communication might be easier when one needs help. The companies based abroad aim their services more internationally. I plumped for TVWhenAway, based in Derbyshire, at just 40 pounds a year. A basic service, easy to use with good video playback.
Slightly more sophisticated services cost around 60 or 70 pounds annually. Many of them also offer a DNS (Domain name System) Proxy service, which does have the advantage of only fooling certain sites as to one's geographic location and therefore being potentially faster than a VPN. Also one does not need to install connecting software, one just makes a few entries in "Network Settings". It worked well with me until my internet service went down, then I couldn't get it back immediately for some reason.
Lastly, high level anonymized surfing starts at around 90 pounds a year and high end UK TV services can stretch into the hundreds of pounds a year level, especially if one wants equipment hosting in the UK.
There are potential complications with the various offers if one wants to use more than one device - I just view my TV on a PC.
Whatever you want and you can afford, but I do hope you find my report helpful if you are dissatisfied with the various free services around or don't like the Filmon approach to this British Expat issue, mentioned again on this thread and elsewhere in other threads.
Lastly, let's hope that a proposal to only allow BBC online services to those who have purchased a TV licence don't get anywhere!

InVinoVeritas

Thanks so much for this really useful review Raffin. Oddly, I decided just now that I would have start using a pay VPN as watching the British Grand Prix on iPlayer with Hola! was excruciating with choppy video and freezes nearly every time there was some on-track action.

tvwhenaway looks like a good solution at a very reasonable price, I also like the fact that on their website you can check if your destination is supported.

++IVV

scrubbedexpat141

I highly recommend Express VPN. In the 4 years I've been in the Middle East it's worked across various Laptops / Macs / iPhones / iPads and has multiple UK locations if one is slow etc. Also covers the US so can watch different stuff on American Netflix.

Normally don't like to name them (we're convinced the authorities here go looking for stuff like this), but it's something like 99 USD a year and worth the cash.

InVinoVeritas

Thanks Scamp, that also looks very interesting but the decision just got more complicated

scrubbedexpat141

It's handy for the American netflix and as a paid service there's no adverts and no hassle. A decent one is obviously essential in the Middle East, given how many sites are banned.

ex reg

Strange innit.
When we're in Singapore I use a free connection which is only 1.06 Mbps.
With that I can be watching say a US TV series in one room and the missus can be watching BBC iPlayer in another room through the same router and no buffering at all.

Mind you as I've found out, see above, things do change so hopefully it'll all work when we're back in Singapore in October.

Raffin

I think that if you are willing to pay around USD100 pa for an international range of destinations there are a number of good VPN options out there, including Express VPN. Just search for VPN Reviews. I'm only interested in the UK and as long as video can play well on my 1.0 Mbps Cable connection for around USD60 pa then I'm happy. Can't be bothered to switch between servers either.
Still on the BBC iPlayer, does anybody know what's going on when you play a Women's Football World Cup game (in this case England v West Germany, but the same thing happened with one of England's previous games) advertised as 2 hour plus in duration, get to the end of the half-time commentary and find it stops?
Annoying to miss the brilliant England own goal!

InVinoVeritas

Just a quick update from me here. I signed up for a month with tvwhenaway so I could watch the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday. It was no faster than using a free VPN with a 350ms ping and 500Kbps download speed (I normally get a 10ms ping and 35Mbps download).

I asked tvwhenaway for some help but they just refunded my subscription so I guess they have no solution.

I will have to try another VPN service now.

Raffin

Yes InVino, your Ping result with TVWhenAway accords with mine - a marked deterioration. But my much lower normal download speed is either maintained or even sometimes greatly increased using their VPN. For example, this morning it was more than twice the normal using the VPN.

After nearly two months I am generally satisfied with their service. Given the time difference between here and the UK and the borderline bandwidth I normally have for video streaming it's been fine for mainly downloading - just the odd occasion when there was no VPN connection for a few minutes. It's been easy to turn on and off and at a reasonable yearly price.

Good they did a quick refund. Watch out for those recurring subscriptions when you do your next trials. In a couple of cases I had to complain to PayPal when it was impossible to cancel through PayPal's own site. They eventually did it, but it was a struggle. Think they were conniving with the companies to make it difficult to cancel.

danielspaniel11234

Android box with kodi installed watch what you want no vpn needed.

Raffin

No need for a VPN or any extra kit if you use a Smart DNS, which just works on a large number of geo-blocked websites worldwide.

I have just trialed SmartDNS.com's offering for two weeks and it worked fine - have now signed up for a year at $34.90. You can get a cheaper rate for two years, but as I posted on an associated thread "Auntie Strikes Back" the BBC are trying to stop people abroad viewing their output, so maybe one shouldn't look that far ahead.

I didn't trial them but there's also Unotelly - quite a bit more expensive, though, so I am happy to stick with SmartDNS.com. SmartDNS.com flag up if your IP address changes, as mine sometimes does, which is useful. The only negative aspect to SmartDNS.com is that the chat support people quickly run out of English - well, they are in the Seychelles. Unotelly is in Denmark and the communication in English is much easier.

SmartDNS works behind the scenes, unlike a VPN, which is always visible on the machine, which in a strange way makes one feel better with a VPN! And,of course, if you want anonymity then choose a VPN - but not one which has been rumbled in the UK, like TVWhenAway's has now been, admittedly just for BBC iPlayer Downloading. And as times goes on more VPNs will be detected.

If you really want to view worldwide TV and get other media features then the Android Box plus Kodi is a good choice - but if one is just wanting to view and download UK TV programmes and get access to a number of other blocked sites elsewhere at an cheap price then I would recommend you just get a SmartDNS for now.