quiltman

you may have seen that the iplayer is asking you to sign in now. Using HOXX vpn proxy I successfully logged in and watched Ian Hislop on Immigration. Just thought you'd like to know!

Stokkevn

I have successfully used one called Windscribe on both BBC and ITV programs

David Mashael

I use Unlocator, seems to work OK

Raffin

For any BBC radio fans.... "signing in" is now also needed for listening to BBC radio through the Radio iPlayer site. A bit strange as there's no licence requirement as with TV. They say they want to do market research and send us programme suggestions. But they're probably just keeping in line with the TV, where a licence is required, and where they want to crackdown on those without using the TV iPlayer site.

They keep you signed in for as long as you keep your browser open, but I close mine, for various reasons, several times a day sometimes, so it's a bit of a nuisance. To get around that I now listen through Streema, which I found to be the best of the radio streaming sites I tried out. No requests to sign in...as of now!

Regarding the TV iPlayer issue for us Expats... I agree that it's easy to register and sign in. The main thing is to say you have a TV licence, as one can't watch on iPlayer without a licence. They are reported to be following those cases up.

What the future holds for viewing UK TV here is another question as the Beeb is reported to be looking into linking access to the iPlayer with the licence. Torrents now tend to only be available for the more popular programmes, although maybe that will change if viewing via a VPN or DNS gets much more difficult or even impossible. Someone will make a business of it.

I'm now thinking of buying a DNS subscription...a two year on the cheapest, SmartDNS, is much less per month, but a year may be the better option for me while the situation clarifies, as I would only use DNS for the BBC and ITV sites.

quiltman

I use TVCatchup - Channels - has all BBC channels plus ITV and a few others. Works fine here without a VPN.For streaming radio I use Internet Radio UK, online radio stations, listen to internet radio - again works perfectly and has hundreds of stations.I rarely watch iplayer but as I said in post1 , HOXX seems to work. I used my old postcode to sign up a couple of years ago.

ex reg

I used to use Hola a lot and it worked for me better than any other VPN.
But then I read that it was liable to viruses etc because it works through peer to peer caching or something, so I stopped using it and tried cyberghost which didn't work as well.
Anyway seeing this thread I googled Hola and now don't see the thread discouraging the use of Hola.

I'm in UK until October but I'll probably try Hola again when I go overseas again.

scot47

Here in the Uk you also have to sign up, Big Brother or just a bit of marketing ?

johnwoo

You can also sign up for ITV, Channel 4 and channel 5 where you don't need to say you have license.

https://www.itv.com/

Raffin

TV Catchup offers free live viewing only, it's not, now at least, a catch up service. They seem to have gone through many legal battles to be considered a cable service, and are still operating, but for how long? Given the BBC's push to restrict internet non licence payers. Anyway, quite acceptable, especially since Filmon/View Abroad now just give a free service for 5 minutes.

The BBC iPlayer offers live viewing, catch up and downloading. VPNs and DNS can be cheap. If you want to record a lot of UK TV, then Filmon's record service would be the best choice.

quiltman

The problem with Filmon now is that yes, you can pay and record programmes but no longer can you download them. I tend to download programmes to USB so I can play them on our TV which does not have an internet connection. OK I could hook up the tablet and stream via that but this method works fine for us. Each to his own I suppose.

quiltman

Isn't that because you now need a licence to watch streaming TV in UK?

Gazza-d

At one time your radio was covered by your TV liecense. I guess as it was uniforcable and with the advert of commercial radio it was dropped.

mikelincs

I think the radio license was dropped because there were so few people just wanting them that the cost of collection was much more than the value they received.

ex reg

Not sure about that.
Don't neeeed a license for iPlayer in the UK.
You just have to click yes when asked if you have a UK TV license.

There is thought that eventually BBC will ask that you input your license number.

If the BBC stopped paying out ridiculous salaries to so called slebs they could prolly do away with the license fee altogether.

mikelincs

Those people they do pay the 'ridiculous salaries' to can, even now, get much, much higher salaries if they go to any of the commercial channels, which is why you got people like Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakly moving from BBC to ITV, because ITV were prepared to give them long contracts at Much enhanced salaries, the fact that they bombed on ITV was due to the fact that they moved from the platform that they were doing so well into untried waters and they were rubbish. Many other presenters have done the same thing, been trained by the BBC with their presenting expertise and then jumping ship to earn much bigger salaries.