Thank you to those who voted in my playful poll about proxy servers. Here are the results of the Perking the Pansies jury:
31% – Yes I use a proxy server in Turkey
28% – No I don’t use a proxy server
10% – I’ve no idea what you’re taking about!
31% – I don’t live in Turkey
For anyone interested, the way to access a proxy server is to sign up to a ‘Virtual Private Network’ (VPN). This handy service provides a gateway to British terrestrial TV and also circumvents internet restrictions by the Turkish authorities. We use my-private-network.co.uk. The service was easy to set up and costs about a fiver a month. This allows us to stream live TV and watch catch up services on our laptop. We also installed the BBC iPlayer to download BBC programmes to watch at our leisure. For an altogether better viewing experience, we connect the laptop to our TV and sound system.
The Downside
The process can be frustrating and unsatisfying. Live streaming and catch up needs a good internet speed. Ours is up and down like whore’s drawers. A variable picture quality, broadcasts that freeze then jump forward and endless buffering can irritatingly interrupt our enjoyment. Downloading programmes using the iPlayer works really well as it saves a temporary copy on our computer but, of course, only applies to BBC broadcasts.
Perking the Pansies 
I don’t use a proxy but did find a website to stream all UK TV channels called FilmOn.com. I’ve been using it for over a year and it costs me 9.95 dollars a month subscription. It also has a low speed option on the main channels which is useful with the crappy internet speed here. As for catch-ups, apart from Youtube, I use this site http://www.watchseries-online.com/ which is also excellent. I get a better reception on this one using Firefox by the way.
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Ayak
Thanks for the this. I’ll take a look
Jack
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Jack,
I use TVAccess.com
Based in UK, it costs £4.99 per month and have had very little trouble with it. The set up was easy and they provide installation instructions for all versions of Windows which are simple to follow. Plus, they give you a standby VPN so you can always log on to that if the primary fails. As with you Jack, there can be some frustrating moments when the system is loading etc. but I have not had major problems.
I did use another website called ExPat Shield which is free, but it seemed to have many more problems than other proxy servers so I binned that one !
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The itv have a web site to down load itv programs called itvplayer its the same as I player and its better if u wantch itvplayer scotland then u don’t have to watch the adverts as they cut them out. Enjoy and look forward every day for your blog
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I’m glad ITV has caught up with Auntie Beeb. Thanks for this and for the complements.
Jack
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