5 ms·

It annoys me that the only way to access iPlayer from abroad is via a VPN. Surely opening it up and allowing international customers to pay some form of license

by domh 4y ago

It annoys me that the only way to access iPlayer from abroad is via a VPN. Surely opening it up and allowing international customers to pay some form of license fee could be a nice little revenue stream for the BBC? I'm guessing the reason is just "licensing issues" but if they're making the programmes then what's the problem? I'm sure there's an international market for watching the world class output from the BBC.

kelipso 4y ago
With the cultural capital that BBC had especially 7 to 10 years ago, I'm pretty sure they would have been at league with Netflix and the like if they had opened it up. Dr Who was huge back then in the US, and you had Sherlock and a few other shows. I think people were just pirating it (?) but lots of people I knew were huge fans.
- jwagenet 4y ago
  Dr. Who was on Netflix for a long time, except maybe whatever recent season, and more recently HBO Max
- domh 4y ago
  There was something called Kangaroo [1] which was a partnership between BBC, ITV and C4 but it got blocked by the competition commission. Now it's run under Britbox I think! [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(video_on_demand) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(video_on_demand)
- mft_ 4y ago
  Absolutely. Given a) they started experimenting with iPlayer pretty early in the streaming came, and b) they have a huge and valuable back catalogue, it's always amazed me that they didn't open up pay-per-view and subscription options for an ex-UK audience. I've always suspected there's a good reason why not behind the scenes - maybe because a successful PPV operation would lend huge weight to people in the UK seeking to abolish the license fee?
kbf 4y ago
Shows are often made by production companies on contract and licensed for domestic distribution. Licensing for international distribution might be significantly more expensive.
- mongol 4y ago
  Yes but they would get more revenue from it too.
  - burnished 4y ago
    Maybe you should start shopping the business case for it around then.
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    They might get some revenue, but they would need to build and maintain a streaming service with payments, and that’s not free. They might also be limited by contracts with local broadcasters, which give them exclusive rights to online distribution within their country, even if they do not exercise them now.
lazyeye 4y ago
Its not the only way. Smart DNS providers like Getflix provide access to BBC Iplayer and a ton of other streaming services too. Basically you use their DNS servers and they handle the geo-unblocking.
867-5309 4y ago
a few years ago I moved outside the UK and spent the best part of 3 months (on and off) trying to access BBC content, legally, still holding residency, paying domiciliary and employment taxes, and paying for a bladdy TV loicence of course, I wanted to do this for as close to free as possible, since plugging an aerial into a tv at home also cost next to nothing VPNs were already being detected and banned. I tried at least 4 extensively, including tcp, udp, socks, wg, obfuscated servers, etc. to no avail dodgy residential/mobile proxies were too unreliable for live 720p m3u streams, not to mention expensive I went through a few cheap linux VPSs with UK ip addresses, forwarding their web streams to my tv outside the UK, until I found one that seemed to work well. so much so I even invested in some fancy routing through intermediary countries for almost jitter-free stability until a few weeks later, back to the same old shite -- everything 403 Unauthorised after yet a few more weeks of furious head-scratching shame over the stable-now-vanished CBeebies and BritComs daily consumption, I concluded and confirmed the BBC had just started detecting and banning datacentre IPs more aggressively it was at this ebb I discovered the wonderful world of illegal IPTV streams and adopted a fuck you too, BBC attitude
- domh 4y ago
  I used a small independent proxy company that I paid £50 a year annually through PayPal. I think they must've been small enough to fly under the radar of the detection algorithms. When I went onto google maps connected to the proxy, it always thought I was in Dubai, which gives you an idea of the clientele. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that it was a Proxy and not a VPN, though I'm not sure if this makes it any less detectable. I even had a Firefox extension that automatically turned on the proxy when opening iPlayer tabs! It worked very well, though I wish I could've paid the license fee and just got access.
  - 867-5309 4y ago
    I dabbled with free and cheap paid-for proxies which were either injecting javascript or too flaky for live video. I saw a few of those smaller providers, but the initial outlay would have been too risky, because I am convinced the BBC throw a lot of money at residential geolocation, so if they haven't already their IP address blocks will be blacklisted at some point in the near future interesting about Dubai though, makes me wonder if they have some sort of expat or economic deal with them. if Google thinks you're there, you can bet BBC do too. I discovered they use multiple CDNs and delivery mechanisms as fallback/best effort for the gamut of user agents, network health and device capabilities, which sometimes (but not always) sieved most (but not all) VPN and proxy locations in an indeterminate (yet authoritatively intentional) fashion, so perhaps Dubai is whitelisted on one of those. who knows. sometimes it's like rolling dice. inconsistency and implied mischief sure are strong deterrents. might investigate further at some point if I can swallow some bile first

by domh 4y ago

kelipso 4y ago

With the cultural capital that BBC had especially 7 to 10 years ago, I'm pretty sure they would have been at league with Netflix and the like if they had opened it up. Dr Who was huge back then in the US, and you had Sherlock and a few other shows. I think people were just pirating it (?) but lots of people I knew were huge fans.

jwagenet 4y ago
Dr. Who was on Netflix for a long time, except maybe whatever recent season, and more recently HBO Max
domh 4y ago
There was something called Kangaroo [1] which was a partnership between BBC, ITV and C4 but it got blocked by the competition commission. Now it's run under Britbox I think! [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(video_on_demand) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(video_on_demand)
mft_ 4y ago
Absolutely. Given a) they started experimenting with iPlayer pretty early in the streaming came, and b) they have a huge and valuable back catalogue, it's always amazed me that they didn't open up pay-per-view and subscription options for an ex-UK audience. I've always suspected there's a good reason why not behind the scenes - maybe because a successful PPV operation would lend huge weight to people in the UK seeking to abolish the license fee?

kbf 4y ago

Shows are often made by production companies on contract and licensed for domestic distribution. Licensing for international distribution might be significantly more expensive.

mongol 4y ago
Yes but they would get more revenue from it too.
- burnished 4y ago
  Maybe you should start shopping the business case for it around then.
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  They might get some revenue, but they would need to build and maintain a streaming service with payments, and that’s not free. They might also be limited by contracts with local broadcasters, which give them exclusive rights to online distribution within their country, even if they do not exercise them now.

lazyeye 4y ago

Its not the only way. Smart DNS providers like Getflix provide access to BBC Iplayer and a ton of other streaming services too. Basically you use their DNS servers and they handle the geo-unblocking.

867-5309 4y ago

a few years ago I moved outside the UK and spent the best part of 3 months (on and off) trying to access BBC content, legally, still holding residency, paying domiciliary and employment taxes, and paying for a bladdy TV loicence of course, I wanted to do this for as close to free as possible, since plugging an aerial into a tv at home also cost next to nothing VPNs were already being detected and banned. I tried at least 4 extensively, including tcp, udp, socks, wg, obfuscated servers, etc. to no avail dodgy residential/mobile proxies were too unreliable for live 720p m3u streams, not to mention expensive I went through a few cheap linux VPSs with UK ip addresses, forwarding their web streams to my tv outside the UK, until I found one that seemed to work well. so much so I even invested in some fancy routing through intermediary countries for almost jitter-free stability until a few weeks later, back to the same old shite -- everything 403 Unauthorised after yet a few more weeks of furious head-scratching shame over the stable-now-vanished CBeebies and BritComs daily consumption, I concluded and confirmed the BBC had just started detecting and banning datacentre IPs more aggressively it was at this ebb I discovered the wonderful world of illegal IPTV streams and adopted a fuck you too, BBC attitude

domh 4y ago
I used a small independent proxy company that I paid £50 a year annually through PayPal. I think they must've been small enough to fly under the radar of the detection algorithms. When I went onto google maps connected to the proxy, it always thought I was in Dubai, which gives you an idea of the clientele. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that it was a Proxy and not a VPN, though I'm not sure if this makes it any less detectable. I even had a Firefox extension that automatically turned on the proxy when opening iPlayer tabs! It worked very well, though I wish I could've paid the license fee and just got access.
- 867-5309 4y ago
  I dabbled with free and cheap paid-for proxies which were either injecting javascript or too flaky for live video. I saw a few of those smaller providers, but the initial outlay would have been too risky, because I am convinced the BBC throw a lot of money at residential geolocation, so if they haven't already their IP address blocks will be blacklisted at some point in the near future interesting about Dubai though, makes me wonder if they have some sort of expat or economic deal with them. if Google thinks you're there, you can bet BBC do too. I discovered they use multiple CDNs and delivery mechanisms as fallback/best effort for the gamut of user agents, network health and device capabilities, which sometimes (but not always) sieved most (but not all) VPN and proxy locations in an indeterminate (yet authoritatively intentional) fashion, so perhaps Dubai is whitelisted on one of those. who knows. sometimes it's like rolling dice. inconsistency and implied mischief sure are strong deterrents. might investigate further at some point if I can swallow some bile first