Watching BBC iPlayer shows in the US on your PS3
Category BBC PS3
A few people emailed me follow-up questions from my post the other day about watching BBC iPlayer shows in the US on my PS3. If you try this regularly from a browser outside the UK you will get a message looking something like this:
This message makes perfect sense, but how do you get around it. I do it the following way:
1. I have a UK VPN account, that allows my PC to appear as if it's from the UK. There are a number of services out there such as Witopia.net, for Witopia.net you need to get their personalVPN™ - SSL option to get a UK gateway.
2. I setup a small Windows XP VMWare machine, it only has 128 mb assigned to it, so I don't even notice it's running on my ESXi server. On that XP image I have installed the personalVPN client, and I have also installed CCProxy I use the demo version of CCProxy as I only have the PS3 and maybe my desktop connecting to it. I start the VPN client and when that is connected I then start CCProxy. I make a note of the IP address of the XP image (makes sense to use a static IP) and then switch over to the PS3.
3. On the PS3 I go through a custom setup of the network, and on;y change one setting from the default, and that is I tell the PS3 to use a proxy. When it prompts for the proxy I enter the IP address of the XP image and the port "808". Now all my browsing on the PS3 is done through the CCProxy which is connected to the internet through the personalVPN proxy. Which means to outside servers it appears as if I am in the UK.
One thing that is nice about this setup, is it still allows me to acccess the Windows Home Server and other media servers on my LAN, as they are not accessed through the proxy. If for some reason I need the PS3 to act like it's back in the US I can just remove the proxy setting. Another benefit of this setup is that I use Firefox as my regular browser, which means I can configure IE on my regular day to day machine to use the proxy, which allows me to watch the BBC iPlayer shows inside an IE window without having to run the VPN software and grab a new IP address.
This same approach works for the Channel 4 OD player, if you download the channel 4 player, and you have the proxy enabled.
The following shows how simply turning on the proxy allows IE to play iPlayer through it. The quality is actually much better than it appears in this Camtasia recording.
A few people emailed me follow-up questions from my post the other day about watching BBC iPlayer shows in the US on my PS3. If you try this regularly from a browser outside the UK you will get a message looking something like this:
Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only, but all BBC iPlayer Radio programmes are available to you.
This message makes perfect sense, but how do you get around it. I do it the following way:
1. I have a UK VPN account, that allows my PC to appear as if it's from the UK. There are a number of services out there such as Witopia.net, for Witopia.net you need to get their personalVPN™ - SSL option to get a UK gateway.
2. I setup a small Windows XP VMWare machine, it only has 128 mb assigned to it, so I don't even notice it's running on my ESXi server. On that XP image I have installed the personalVPN client, and I have also installed CCProxy I use the demo version of CCProxy as I only have the PS3 and maybe my desktop connecting to it. I start the VPN client and when that is connected I then start CCProxy. I make a note of the IP address of the XP image (makes sense to use a static IP) and then switch over to the PS3.
3. On the PS3 I go through a custom setup of the network, and on;y change one setting from the default, and that is I tell the PS3 to use a proxy. When it prompts for the proxy I enter the IP address of the XP image and the port "808". Now all my browsing on the PS3 is done through the CCProxy which is connected to the internet through the personalVPN proxy. Which means to outside servers it appears as if I am in the UK.
One thing that is nice about this setup, is it still allows me to acccess the Windows Home Server and other media servers on my LAN, as they are not accessed through the proxy. If for some reason I need the PS3 to act like it's back in the US I can just remove the proxy setting. Another benefit of this setup is that I use Firefox as my regular browser, which means I can configure IE on my regular day to day machine to use the proxy, which allows me to watch the BBC iPlayer shows inside an IE window without having to run the VPN software and grab a new IP address.
This same approach works for the Channel 4 OD player, if you download the channel 4 player, and you have the proxy enabled.
The following shows how simply turning on the proxy allows IE to play iPlayer through it. The quality is actually much better than it appears in this Camtasia recording.
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Posted by Mike At 04:41:44 AM On 10/11/2009 | - Website - |