MarylandNed

TunnelBear is one. You can try it for free with a 500MB monthly download limit which won't last that long but it's enough to let you see how it works.

First, try watching something with BBC iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv)
You'll get a message that you can only watch in the UK.
Download/install TunnelBear (http://www.tunnelbear.com/).
Start it up, turn on the VPN and set your location to UK.
Now go back and watch your BBC iPlayer programme.

You can also watch programmes with ITV Player (http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/)

RICH

Maybe you could try after dark, when the satellites are in the western hemisphere?

Bob

They still doing the thing where you tweet about them to get a gig free?

Anyway, with iPlayer and the others, as long as it isn't live, you can switch the VPN off after a couple of mins as it buffers up and the show will still continue to stream, that'll save your monthly bandwidth. That trick doesn't work very well for live events, which tend to cut out now and again and need rechecking and of course you need to switch it back on if you're changing shows, so it's not ideal, but good enough for occasional uses.

Steve_

People call it "VPN" but it's not really a VPN, they use the VPN client built into Windows or whatever to connect to their proxy server but usually there is no encryption to speed it up, so really it is just a way of creating a connection.

Essentially they provide their IP address in the foreign country to your computer so that you can defeat the per country IP address restrictions.

However, because the network traffic from your computer goes through their server, usually there isn't enough bandwidth at peak times and you get choppy video or lots of buffering.

If you have someone in the UK who can help you, a better way to do it is for them to set up Internet Connection Sharing on their PC and you use that as a proxy. Because of the time difference it shouldn't be a major problem, they just have to leave their computer on.

Personally I think all the bandwidth issues make it tedious and pointless, plus the time difference also makes it stupid unless you're okay with using the BBC iPlayer.

Also another method of blocking connections is via network latency (i.e. how long the traffic takes to get from A to B), you can't defeat that using a proxy server (unless they use major buffering) and there's no way of speeding up the speed of light.

Steve_

Plus they use spot beams. One of my neighbours has DirecTV, it's a complete farce, he can't get the local spot beams so he has an aerial for local TV, and he can get about half the channels as DirecTV use five satellites.

It's just daft, especially as we have east coast American networks on cable and local satellite.

Makes a bit more sense if you live right on the border as you can get all the spot beams.