get TV abroad

Archive for the ‘iplayer on other devices’ Category

Well in this case not really! I decided to upgrade my Internet here in Australia, those who live down this way will know connections can be pretty poor!

I have been using DoDo for sometime, and while they have their moments the speeds back to the UK are often pretty awful, making watching iPlayer Abroad more difficult than it needs to be. So we have moved over to BigPond, one of the larger ISPs here in Oz, and their 30mBit cable connection… or at least we SHOULD have… what I actually have at the moment is a 3G mobile phone connection on my iPhone4 tethered to my PC… the amazing news is that even with this I am able, just, to watch BBC iPlayer here in Oz using Identity Cloaker. Yep thats right with the iPhones 3G connection hooked up via USB cable to my PC Identity Cloaker works a treat, I tried it vie bluetooth as well but it seemed to be a bit slower.

Anyway I have been promised a real connection on September 3rd (thats one whole month late) so I hope to be fully back online then and get those videos of SkyPlayer running for you guys!

I have already covered how to download from BBC iPlayer outside the UK (you will need to use the VPN function) however these videos are all DRM protected and you can only watch them for a certain amount of time. There are various rather tedious way to convert the videos to a none-DRM version, however there is a rather neat utility you can use to download the videos directly from the BBC DRM free. iPlayer Downloader is a free tool which downloads MP4 versions of programs on BBC iPlayer, and you can use it while abroad if you have a copy of Identity Cloaker.

I will put a video up showing how to use it after Christmas, but it's pretty easy to use if you want to give it a go now. Simply download the program and run it, then start up Identity Cloaker and use the VPN option (this will not work through proxy at the moment) select one of the MAC compatible UK servers and connect as you would normally do. Now visit the BBC iPlayer website and slect the program you want to watch, when the program starts take a look at the URL in your browsers address bar, it will look something like this:

hXXp://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pftz5/The_Hairy_Bikers_Twelve_Days_of_Christmas/

All you need to do is copy the bit I have highlighted in yellow in to iPlayer Downloader and click 'Download'

After a short time your program will be downloaded and ready to watch whenever you want. As the program downloads the MP4 version you can even upload the video direct to your iPhone or iPod if you like.

The BBC has released some nuggets of information about iPlayer usage, the not so surprising facts are that its mostly younger people and 3/4 of people connect to iPlayer with their PC.

However given the new re-release of the iPlayer Wii channel, as well as the older PS3 and iPhone variants, the move to other connection methods is slowly taking hold. In particular watching iPlayer on an iPhone is an interesting experience as there are no restrictions on the use of 3G networks like there are for many other TV applications. In fact even in Australia connecting to iPlayer via 3G works extremely well. Unfortunately right now I can release how this works with the iPhone, but this should change soon!

What would be more interesting is if they revealed how many people watch iPlayer abroad, or even at work!

If you want to read about the BBC usage statistics take a look at the original posting.

Well actually they are re-launching it as BBC iPlayer for Wii has been available for quite while, so to be honest the quality in the past was rather poor so we can only hope they improve this. Now it is not clear is if the channel will be available to those outside the UK, though it IS clear that by default the channel will not work for this outside the UK.

However just like the PS3 and iPhone versions of BBC iPlayer there will be way to make it work abroad, though it will require some tinkering.

You will need to setup Identity Cloaker on your computer and connect to the UK through a VPN and not proxy, then enable Internet sharing on the computer. You can either use the built in Internet Sharing program in Windows OR search Google for some more advanced options. If you use the one built in to Windows then in the future your Wii/iPhone/PS3 will connect through your computer, and thus will connect through your VPN connection to the UK.

The people behind Identity Cloaker are working on a new version of the software which will make the above task easier, I will post about that as soon as more information is released.