The Options to Watch UK Television Abroad

For English speakers at least, I’m fairly confident that the TV in the UK is amongst the best in the world. Outside commercial TV stations there is little to compete with the BBCs TV Schedules and current affairs. Now that the BBC has lots of great channels, there’s a lot to choose from and it’s also even easier to watch the great US shows on UK television as even the commercial stations have loads less breaks.

Unfortunately if you are living outside the UK it isn’t always easy to get access to UK TV, but here’s a few methods in case you want to try.

For those who still retain a home in the UK then have a look at a great little device called a Slingbox, this attachs to any satellite system and relays your connection through an internet connection. For those who have everything set up in the UK and just need a way to get access to their setup the slingbox can be a great choice.

Remember though you can only display one channel at a time both locally and remotely, so if someone is using the setup in the UK you both have to watch the same thing, the next thing to check is that you have a decent upload speed from the UK which helps you stream the video. With those in place you can access all your satellite and cable channels and watch UK TV abroad on your PC. If you don’t have a home in the UK and still want access to this system, you can get people to host the box for you but this can obviously get quite expensive.

The most popular way to access UK TV though is through the channels own web sites. The BBC Iplayer website is probably the most extensive and famous of these websites with good reason. But don’t forget that all the major UK TV stations such as Sky, Channel 4 and 5 all have similar sites as well. There is a slight problem with this if you’re not in the UK and this is a system called Geotargeting.

Geotargeting is the process of defining what you see based on your IP address, so if you’re in the US you’ll get more American content for instance. This functionality if sometimes quite useful, helping to tailor your web searches to yoru local area for instance, but it’s also used extensively to block access. All the major UK TV websites, block access to their content to anyone who has an IP address from outside the United Kingdom.

Fortunately there is a way to bypass the geotargeting restrictions quite easily. For the BBC Iplayer currently you can just a UK proxy server to surf through. It’s fairly easy to do but the challenge is finding a reliable service. You can find free ones that sometimes work, but they constantly disappear, fall over and generally break. If you have lots of time to search each time you want to view something it may be an option for you.

For the other UK stations you need something slightly more than a proxy, you need something called a VPN (a Virtual Private Network) – this is because the other stations media sites block the use of ordinary proxies. It’s unlikely you’ll find a free VPN unless you can set one up yourself. All the main US sites require a VPN as well (a US based one) to access outside the States.

I hope this has given you an insight into how it’s possible to access UK TV abroad or wherever you are in the world. There are technologies to help you and beat down the barriers of geotargeting online.