[Gold-2K]

I’m excited to be out of uk for much of the run up to 8th June, but will be on a stopover in Sydney at the time the results start coming in. My other half is fascinated by the results and is panicking he won’t be able to watch the BBC live as the results come in.

Anyone have any suggestions how we can access live TV and watch the results come in while in Sydney …… we will be armed with the full range of mobile devices?

Thanks

[SimonS1]

Get a decent vpn and watch on BBC.

[Gold-2K]

And suggestions for a decent VPN?

[LuganoPirate]

Though it was mentioned FilmOnTV was no longer working, I’m watching BBC and ITV channels through the app without any problem at all. No VPN needed, just an ad to watch then you can watch the channel.

[SimonS1]

[quote quote=808286]And suggestions for a decent VPN?

[/quote]

I use Tunnel Bear but there are plenty out there.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/internet/best-vpn-services-of-2017-3657732/

[batterytraveller]

The BBC typically have a non-georstricted feed for election coverage from the BBC news website. It won’t work if you go through iPlayer.

[stevescoots]

I use express VPN, its a paid for service and perfect for things such as getting thru the great fire wall

[K1ngston]

I totally agree with stevescoots, living in Asia you will need a VPN to see certain “un censored” content and the best service by far and I have reviewed and probably used them all is Express VPN, there after sales service is second to none too. It works in every jurisdiction including Australia, but will probably agree with batterytraveller that the election programmes should not have any restrictions to view wherever you are…….

[stevescoots]

I had my VPN up and running this weekend just for some items we would class as normal. Taxing a car in UK on-line, GFW blocked it. Needed to use PayPal on something, PayPal does not like China IP address. Checking a flight on KLM to use some points up, constantly send me to a China payment service that needed a Chinese ID card. Fired up the VPN and problem solved. Often i must use it just to access our corporate mail server in the US as it takes so long getting through outlook just times out, and forget trying to download anything from cloud services such as drop box, MS online etc. The VPN is a life saver and without one i really do not know how companies can be efficient or in some cases even do business with the outside world when in China

[LuganoPirate]

I also use Tunnel Bear (paid for) but despite many saying FilmOn is being stopped, I find it very much alive and working. Anyone know anything about this?

[Swissdiver]

I am using on all my devices Surfeasy, a company owned by Opera, a Norwegian company that produces what is, for me, the best browser. Beyond the obvious security a VPN provides, I can select the country in which I want to appear (a choice of 16, including UK, US, Germany, France, …). This is very useful, notably for sports. And it works (I have a premium version called “Total” covering 5 devices for less than USD 50 per year, but there is also a free one, and even one incorporated in the Opera browser).

[Gold-2K]

I ended up going with a £5/month VPN with my expat network. No min subscription period. Works fine so far in Hong Kong and Australia, at least it does with BBC.co.uk and iPlayer which is all I’ve tried so far.

[IanFromHKG]

I tried ExpressVPN but wasn’t happy with them as the connection was unstable.

I should explain that I have a setup at home with two wifi routers, one of which supports VPN logins – so we have two WiFi networks, one of which makes websites think we are in HK (the ordinary one) and one of which (the VPN router) makes them think we are in the UK. We are able to access BBC iPlayer, UKTV, ITV Hub and Amazon Prime UK (bizarrely, our Amazon Prime membership allows us to log in for HK or UK – and presumably other places – but the content varies depending on whether Amazon thinks we are logging in from the UK or HK). The problem with ExpressVPN is that the connection would randomly terminate, which meant that to reconnect I had to fire up my laptop and tell the router to reconnect – no use at all when I was away from home and the Memsahib wanted to watch ITV3 (her favourite channel)!

So I switched to PureVPN, and am very happy indeed with them, not least because I only pay US$2.99 per month! It is worth trying to approach the subscription services from different directions – going straight in seems to give an undiscounted price, but approaching it through other third-party sites which recommend different VPN providers seems to trigger them to offer discounted prices. I think PureVPN were asking US$7 per month if you logged straight into their website, but as noted above I cut this to less than half by approaching through a third-party site.

In fairness to ExpressVPN they, just like PureVPN, have a very responsive instant-chat tech support service which operates 24/7. It is just that my experience with PureVPN showed greater stability, and better streaming. Despite our so-called broadband at home being capped at 8Mb/s by our provider (it’s an old building), which means in reality often only achieving a fraction of that, we are consistently able to stream 4k hi-def video.

PureVPN (again, not wishing to overly criticise ExpressVPN, I should add they have the same) allow access through other devices (I believe I can have up to ten at a time) either directly (if the device supports VPN access) or via an app/program (Windows, Mac, iOS and Android all supported).

Gold-2k, you say you used an expat network. Was that one of the HKEXpatTV/ThaiExpatTV networks? We hear from friends that their home base in Thailand was recently shut down by the authorities. Which allowed me to be very smug, since said friends were all paying ten times what I pay just to get UK TV, whereas I don’t just get UK TV, I get all the additional benefits of a VPN. As stevescoots says, this is brilliant for travellers, allowing them to bypass the Great Firewall of China and other local content restrictions.

[Author]

Posts