I was back in UK recently and discovered the BBC iplayer, its almost as good as TV or better consdering you can browse and watch what you want.

I've tried and doesn't work here in US (nor anywhere outside UK for that matter) - does anyone know how to get it working?

Any help much appreciated.

Arthur

it won't work

they disable it for anyone with a non-UK IP address

it won't work, unless you can 'show' a UK IP address to their servers

Do a search of the forums here and in the 'The Lab' forum for words like 'VPN' or 'Proxy'.

and then pay for a VPN service because none, or well most of the free ones are crap and won't carry the bandwidth to push a video stream, audio for the radio just about.

A while back, they interviewed the guy in the BBC who is responsible for "sexing up" the services offered to the public (you know, the whole "bring the BBC into the 21st century" spiel). He was proudly talking about everything he had achieved, and then came onto the iPlayer (which he was "very excited about", yawn). The interviewer then asked him whether they intended to offer iPlayer to overseas audiences, at a cost, and his response was brief, along the lines of it's too much hassle and not economically viable. Oh, OK, then.

And as much as it pains me, I have to agree with his last comment. It's not the technology, but copyright agreements. Shows are cleared in territories and markets (we all remember the stupid DVD regions!) and artists agents usually see $$$$$ signs when such territories as the US or World get mentioned. Why do think BBC America shows cheap crap other than the biggies!

Aye, but I would have thought a pay on demand service would be relatively straightforward - I mean, with the amazing things we can do with technology these days, I fail to understand why it should be so complicated. Unless it is the corporate lawyers who are getting in the way ... then things get expensive.

As for DVD regions, these days it seems easy to play multi-region DVDs, so that one was an easy fix - why not this? Seems especially in the current climate, people would want to make money but I guess not.

The problem is, if they sell show X to channel Y, they make bloody millions.

Channel Y won't pay for the show if you can just get it on iplayer for cheap.

BBC lose a much larger income than by opening iplayer.

It's crap, but that's the way it is.

I bought a UK ip address which I active prior to logging onto BBC iPlayer. Works for me!

Just search online for a UK ip

A proxy is the answer, the quality of the stream will depend on the bandwidth of the proxy provider and the network latacy between you, the proxy, and the BBC Iplayer streaming servers. The BBC probably will not roll iplayer outside of the UK, if it does it will be a 'dumbed' down version, due to digital media rights, which specifically prohibit programming from being exported.

and the fact you don't pay a TV license outside the UK. Buy a dedicated VPN.

You could also subscribe to Sky and take advantage of the Sky Player online which has BBC plus all the other channels

[QUOTE=bjohn;7735517]and the fact you don't pay a TV license outside the UK. Buy a dedicated VPN.

I have heard this suggestion before, I would not recommend a VPN, a VPN is usually encrypted, you really dont want to encrypt the video stream, as it will add overhead to the connection, unencrypted proxy is probably the best.

Of course there are other solutions than IPlayer, personally I have all my recordings automated by using a variety of a MythTV server, two TiVo's and a slingbox (slingbox is only used for live viewing)

I'm trialling a UK VPN at the moment which is £5 a month. It works very well so far. iplayer, itv catchup, 4od etc work completely.

I've been using TOR/Foxy Proxy with Firefox and have no real problems with it. Sometimes it's a little slow to load (time to make a cup of tea), but once it loads, everything is good.

Watching Torchwood every night this week - it's epic!

do you use Torbutton with the Tor Bundle?

I thought Tor was more a layered onion type approach to masking your IP rather than as a proxy?