

Watch the Olympics from anywhere: this actually works - irq
https://gist.github.com/3195652

======
coderrr
As I've said in other comments. This is fun and hackerish but it's cheaper and
simpler to just sign up for a VPN for a month that has UK gateways. Like
<https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/> for $6.95

~~~
fl3tch
That's what I've been using and it works great. Some of their US nodes are
slow, probably because overloaded, but I maxed out my 20 Mbit internet
connection testing their UK London server.

Edit: I should also point out that a $20 Linode box just for VPN is overkill.
If you really want to go the VPS route, there are plenty of sub-$10 VPS
providers in the UK.

~~~
coderrr
If you email me at coderrr.contact@gmail.com I can try to help figure out why
you get slow speeds on some of our US servers. None of our servers are even
running near capacity.

~~~
someperson
It would have been good courtesy to declare your affiliation with this company
in your original comment

~~~
coderrr
Yea I should have. I guess I forgot to because I had already done so in these
other comments [1] and wrongly assumed everyone had read them as well. Anyway,
I'm the cofounder of said service.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4307364> and
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4307380>

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kellishaver
I really wish I could just subscribe to iPlayer. I don't want to subscribe to
a cable or satellite service that I wouldn't use (and then pay extra for BBC
channels), and I like a lot of their content. I'd gladly pay the BBC money for
easy, legal online access to it.

~~~
AffableSpatula
I'd like to see this happen just so that British taxes aren't being spent
providing free coverage to people in other countries.

~~~
dasil003
If they wanted to do that they'd need to have global streaming rights, which
would cost much much much much more than the marginal bandwidth taken up by
the fraction of users with the tech savvy to set up a proxy.

~~~
ZoFreX
Who exactly would the BBC have to pay for "global streaming rights" to content
they already own?

~~~
stan_rogers
In this particular instance, the IOC.

~~~
Kadrith
I think the OP meant access to regular BBC programming; not the Olympic
coverage.

~~~
stan_rogers
While the Beeb does produce a lot of its own programming, there is also much
of it that is done in partnership with other public broadcasters outside of
the UK and with corporate bodies who have distribution rights (which are a
part of copyright) outside of the UK, whether those rights are exercised or
not. The BBC having distribution rights in the UK does not automatically grant
them rights to distribute outside of the UK.

------
davej
Or you can just tunnel through the ssh connection to your VM, I do this all
the time to watch BBC.

    
    
        ssh -D 9050 [user]@[vm.ip]
    

You now have a SOCKS proxy on port 9050. Done!

~~~
enimodas
while you can easily set a SOCKS proxy for your browser, flash will still use
your normal connection.

~~~
seabee
Which is more efficient if the sites don't care where the flash connection
comes from (like, apparently, the BBC)

~~~
irq
Actually, the Flash BBC iPlayer will _not_ work if it connects from the United
States. Additionally, I discovered that the BBC is using Akamai for streaming
their live content, and Akamai's United States servers do not have the
content. So even if you convince the BBC that you're in England, but talk to
Akamai servers in the US, the content does not stream.

Interestingly, BBC is using Limelight for pre-recorded content, and that
content is apparently cached globally.

~~~
seabee
I never tried the live streams - the time difference was inconvenient enough.

Live content gets licensed differently to the catch-up content, which you can
view without paying the license fee. Given catch-up is usually more restricted
(some programmes unavailable for example) I imagine the only reason Limelight
is globally accessible is because that's the default mode of operation and the
iPlayer website is considered a sufficient region restriction mechanism.

------
dcesiel
Or you could just use the unlimited TunnelBear VPN for $5 a month.

~~~
irq
And potentially send sensitive traffic through an untrusted third party. Some
people are comfortable with that, some people aren't.

~~~
rorrr
You can disconnect from the VPN after you're done watching.

~~~
irq
All of the UK-endpoint VPN providers I considered were sketchy in one way or
another, and most of them had very poor speeds from the UK to the US. A VPN
connection usually bypasses your local firewall too, depending on
configuration, which means you really, really have to trust the people running
your VPN service, and trust that they isolated their customers from each
other. Linode, on the other hand, is a well-respected company with extremely
good connectivity (I get 160ms pings from San Diego, CA and more than 30mbit/s
transfer). And I know the guy who is running my VPN service on Linode: me.

If you're the kind of person who gladly exchanges security and privacy for $10
to $15, then those other options are for you.

~~~
Gigablah
And how do you determine that Linode is more trustworthy than TunnelBear?

------
brackin
I'm not sure about the legalities abroad but in the UK at least it's illegal
to watch this stream without a TV licence and they do try and prosecute people
if they can find an address attached to your IP, obviously this isn't possible
through this method but just a heads up.

Another option which doesn't require a tv licence is TVCatchup.com which
legally streams UK TV channels (to the UK only).

Although I will say the BBC interface is far better and allows you to go back
to the start if you press play on the live player half way through and of
course is ad free.

Regardless, I condone this as NBC should allow everyone to watch online live
and if they don't people will go to better alternatives.

~~~
mseebach
> they do try and prosecute people if they can find an address attached to
> your IP

How? Will the ISPs actually just hand those out?

~~~
brackin
They do a surprising amount, they seriously have vans that drive around
scanning to see if you're watching television on a physical TV and if so if
you don't have a licence they'll fine you

I'm not sure if they are actually finding out if you have a TV licence on the
stream yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they are/do.

~~~
mseebach
The effectiveness of detector vans is an urban myth.

The only confirmed tactics is requiring stores selling TVs to collect the
address of the buyer and knocking on the doors of people not paying the
licence in the assumtion that they actually have a TV.

~~~
ZoFreX
They drove a very obvious looking "detector van" around near our university
halls for a few days, and a few days later every person that had a TV and no
license got a letter, got scared, and paid up.

Of course, everyone that had no TV and no license also got a letter... and so
did everyone that already had a TV license!

------
wolf550e
If I don't care about watching it live, can I just get the recording in a
torrent?

~~~
icebraining
Sure, the opening ceremony has more than 8000 seeds:
<http://torrentz.eu/search?f=olympics>

------
stoked
I did something similar to watch hulu from Canada awhile back but I had split
tunnelling disabled where all traffic goes through the vpn so no messing
around with static routes and ips. Also setup a local DNS cache on the VPS and
configured openvpn to use the VPS DNS cache when connected. CDN's generally
use the ip of the DNS request to determine where to direct your browser to
download the media, static host entries would avoid the DNS request though. I
no longer have it setup, but I do have my config backed up somewhere. If
someone's interested I'll look for it.

------
vegardx
If you're in europe you can watch it live at NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting
Corporation), but the commentary will ofcourse be in Norwegian. NRK has
excellent coverage, with 7 (9 including NRK1 and NRK2) dedicated channels.

See more:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnrk.no%2Fol2012%2Fnyheter%2Fslik-
ser-du-ol-pa-nrk-i-utlandet-1.8257380)

------
bgentry
Works great. This way you don't have to send all your traffic through the VPN,
only the requests that are used to geolocate you.

You can use the same method to bypass MLB.tv blackout restrictions.

Instead of a Linode box, I use a privatetunnel.com VPN (free starter
available) and modify the config:

    
    
      route-nopull # (to avoid sending all traffic through)
      route outbound-ip netmask # ex: route 8.8.8.8 255.255.255.0

------
idan
I found this resource to be helpful in actually getting the routes working. In
particular, setting up NAT to forward traffic from the VPN to the outside
world:

[https://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/ubuntu-10.10-m...](https://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/ubuntu-10.10-maverick#sph_configuring-
the-virtual-private-network)

------
MrKurtHaeusler
Or just sign up for a distance learning course from a UK university. Aberdeen
gives you a proxy, the OU as far as I know, doesn't.

------
irq
If the BBC changes their IP addresses and I haven't updated the IP list, you
can simply adjust your VPN client settings to route all traffic over the VPN
connection. Viscosity makes this easy. That will always work, but will cause
other Internet services to think you're in England, and make things feel a bit
slower overall.

------
cientifico
The same thing that the people need to access "How I need your mother".

After a few years, the easiest solution is to just buy a prxoy. Normally
cheaper.

------
webmonkeyuk
I reckon it'll just be a matter of time until the BBC start blocking traffic
from IP ranges that look like VPS hosting companies.

~~~
Axsuul
Hopefully this method won't become too mainstream since it requires some
hacking.

