We have the relevant package; but Insight won't even acknowledge our login to use the app. They can keep their streams and ad-views if they don't want to make it even half-usable.
I have roughly the same problem. I spend around $140/mo for internet and cable, of which I receive the full NBC suite of channels. However, the app refuses my provider's login information. When I contacted my provider, they just sent me up to an NBC support clerk who told me essentially "Wow, that really sucks." and that was it. There was no recourse, simply re-acknowledging that I had a problem and they would attempt nothing to fix it.
I normally wouldn't be overly concerned about it, probably just a bit flustered, but this is a global event that occurs twice a decade. I feel this should really be something public broadcasters should control, not mega-corporations.
You might want to verify that your provider doesn't have multiple login schemes. My Time Warner franchise has one account for payment and account services "pay express" and another for service access "my services".
In the Netherlands you can watch it via NOS. They have explanations for how to watch it on your pc, mobile, tv, radio, twitter/fb. See http://nos.nl/os2012/volg-de-spelen/.
The NOS website has a nice design. The sports and events are very well categorised. They even place a thumbnail of the video stream in the floating menu when you are looking at items further down the page (so you don't miss out on anything while reading the articles). The only thing that's missing are other languages than Dutch, is it possible that it's done deliberately to keep people from abroad out?
Are you saying technically under the hood, or just how does a person use the service?
Using the service is trivial for anybody on HN. Just a matter of setting your DNS settings to specific servers. That's it.
Technically... I'm still trying to figure that one out. I think what they do is handle the IP check from the service, and then pass off the stream to your computer. This would make sense since the stream server would be different than the IP check server. This is great because then only a very limited subset of traffic is flowing through their servers so you get "native" speeds.
You've got the right idea. I ended up implementing my own proxy for Netflix as you describe. I use dnsmasq to hijack the relevant DNS requests and then I wrote my own https proxy to proxy the API connections. The actual streams come from CDNs of which are not concerned about your country of origin.
Not sure why others downvoted you. I just tried unblock-us.com and it works... basically by changing your DNS servers. I added it to the article as another option.
I'm confused because I thought that geo-restrictions were handled by IP address, so I'm not sure how this gets around that.
On Mac OS X, you can use them just for specific domains. For example, create:
/etc/resolver/bbc.co.uk
with the contents:
nameserver 208.122.23.22
nameserver 208.122.23.23
And now you'll be using unblock-us's name servers for just bbc.co.uk and its subdomains. You could do something similar for your entire network with dnsmasq.
Unfortunately, this tip doesn't seem to be working for the Olympics replays on the BBC's site (they all have a "try again later" every time I try to watch one).
Thanks for the tip, though, and kudos to Unblock-Us for being one of a VERY few sites that let you trial their service without giving them payment details.
It appears some items are being served from player.bbchdsodsecure-f.akamaihd.net -- but even when I redirect that to unblock's DNS servers I still can't watch those videos.
edit: using unotelly.com's DNS for co.uk and bbchdsodsecure-f.akamaihd.net works for me.
Our VPN at https://www.privateinternetaccess.com also has multiple gigabits of bandwidth available through our two UK gateways. We have an app that provides one click setup on both windows and osx.
Proxies like unotelly may send more of your traffic through their service than you would like. You can protect your traffic but still use the tunnel if you only send bbc.co.uk DNS lookups to unotelly.
Here's how to do this in Ubuntu 12.04. The DNS has changed in 12.04 to use NetworkManager, which makes the process more convoluted than it should be. The below instructions could be improved but it'll get you some BBC Olympics coverage.
$ nslookup bbc.co.uk
# you should see a UK IP e.g. 212.58.241.131
$ vi /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
# comment out dnsmasq
#dns=dnsmasq
# save+quit
$ vi /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf
prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;
$ service network-manager restart
# create a new dnsmasq.conf with unotelly California DNS 184.169.139.227 206.214.214.28
# note that server=192.168.11.1 is my router (which handles my upstream DNS) and you'll need to change that IP.
$ vi /etc/dnsmasq.conf
this is the official european broadcast stream. simply the best, every event in live and you can also replay them. plus there is no commentator here, just the raw broadcast (i hate when commentators talk too much...)
Will have to check the TV Licensing info again to be sure we're allowed to watch this; works for me but had to disable ad-blocking to allow the video stream to play (after an interstitial).
That sucks about not being able to get it OTA. I'm in Toronto and with a $20 antenna I can get a solid NBC broadcast from Buffalo. The local CTV channel also has an Olympics program so at any point in time I usually have 2 sporting events to choose from.
It's not clear that he has no terrestrial NBC affiliate. He might well have one that he can't receive with "spare coax cable used as my antenna" instead of, say, an actual antenna.
I can't imagine coax works well as an antenna, considering it's shielded to prevent RF interference.
Use your email and get a temporary pass on NBColympics.com.
Although it only lasts 4hrs but I assume you can use a different email after that and it might still work.
The "+ syntax" does not belong to Gmail, nor was Gmail the inventor of same. foo+bar@domain.net is an ancient tradition, dating back almost to the dawn of SMTP. Of course, the interpretation of the local part is entirely up to the MTA handling it, but foo+bar is pretty widespread. Certainly Sendmail supports it.
I didn't know that. Now that'll be my pet peeve. Im guessing many people have only seen the + as a gmail hack to sign up multiple times on the same site.
> Sure! In fact, if you’re in the UK, you can legally stream every event of the Olympics live, and commercial free.
Note that I believe you need to pay the licence fee to legally watch iPlayer (IIRC it pops up a dialog the first time you run it to confirm you've paid). So even in the UK you have to "pay for TV" to get this service. It costs approx £12/month.
Cool - I talk about that at the bottom of the article. But I added a note in that section that you need to pay for a TV license to stream legally. Thanks.
Some European countries' laws haven't caught up the same way the UK has. For instance, you can legally watch the Swedish SVT's live streams without a licence fee. Other countries have gone further - in Denmark they either implemented or were just debating a law where you have to pay the license fee if you own a PC or Mobile phone that can watch streaming video.
I'm nitpicking but I feel it's worth pointing out that not only do UK viewers of live TV need a license but all taxpayers contribute to the BBC by separate payments from direct taxation.
UK ISPs appear to throttle iPlayer traffic so ironically using a proxy might be worthwhile in the UK too.
The bbc is almost entirely funded by the licence fee. There is a small grant to cover world service (mainly for political reasons eg providing news in Arabic) and BBC worldwide makes some money, but the vast majority is from the tv license.
From you Wikipedia link BBC income includes "£279.4 million from government grants;". That's about 6% of the amount taken from license fees, I'd argue that's not insignificant. Financial information about treasury spend on the BBC seems quite hard to find however.
On point 2 why would the BBC be spending money to develop a system to indicate throttling if there wasn't even an "appearance" (as I claimed) that there was some throttling. Surely they'd want to show at least that there was an appearance of throttling before starting such a project?
FWIW my own experience with one of the top UK ISPs has been of quite poor service for iPlayer - significantly lower bandwidth is used for iPlayer connection than for other streaming sites. That is watching the same show in low quality on iPlayer I get significantly poorer connection than watching in higher quality streaming from some other site - this gives the appearance that iPlayer is being throttled.
It informs you that you need to be paying the license fee to watch live TV on the iPlayer but there doesn't seem to be any check. In other words even if you are not paying the fee, tell it you are and you should be able to start streaming.
> I believe you need to pay the licence fee to legally watch iPlayer
Not entirely true. If you only use iPlayer for catchup, you don't need a TV license. But if you use iPlayer to watch TV programmes as they are being broadcast on TV, you do.
Wait, I don't quite get it - the first thing the author says is that he got "crystal clear" high-def Olympics coverage from someone called Telemundo over the air. He goes on to conclude that "There is no good way to watch the Olympics in the United States without a cable subscription".
Is there a radio broadcast you can listen to for sound whilst watching the images from Telemundo. I've heard of people doing this to choose a superior radio commentary whilst watching sport on TV in the UK.
AFAIK, NBC/Telemundo doesn't own any radio stations. And since NBC isn't broadcasting live, even if someone was running a radio broadcast it's highly unlikely they'd be in sync.
It is illegal if you live in the UK and consume TV to not pay for your TV license.
Legally, I’m unclear of if an American connecting on a VPN to a live stream in the UK is breaking the law. I would guess that it hasn’t really come up with the TV license people yet.
I don't know about the UK law, but nearby Ireland has a similar "TV Licence". The law there is not "you need a licence to watch TV", but "if you're in Ireland and you have something that's capable of recieving TV signals, then you need a TV licence".
If the UK is similar, then it's not "watch BBC" that requires a licence, but "owning a TV in the UK". The OP almost certainly does not own a TV in the UK, so almost certainly not need a TV licence.
(NB: There may or may not be terms & conditions on the iPlayer website which say you may only access it if you are in UK / have a TV licence / etc., which might make the above the illegal (but not for TV licence reasons). I'm suprised the Olympics works for them, usually BBC iPlayer stuff uses GeoIP to block it from non-UK IP addresses.)
> You must be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV. It makes no difference what equipment you use - whether it’s a laptop, PC, mobile phone, digital box, DVD/video recorder or a TV set - you still need a licence.
According to Wikipedia[0], the UK is actually more like "You need to pay if you have something you use to watch TV". This is quite better than some other countries.
A license is required in the UK to watch "LIVE" TV - this distinction was made (and has been upheld in court) when VCRs were introduced.
But has been regarded as applying to the BBC's iPlayer - you can watch the "watch again" (PVR function) but need a license to watch the live stream.
The iplayer is only available in the UK - but that's a contractual deal with the BBC, not a legal point - so if you had a VPN that worked in the UK then it's a civil matter between you and the BBC
All the BBC radio content is available for free worldwide. Although Americans should be aware that Radio4 contains dangerous levels of sarcasm, satire and irony and might not be suitable for FOX viewers
Indeed, it is similar here in the UK. Although importantly, it tends to be interpreted as 'something that you do use to watch TV'. So for instance, the TV that OP had that he did not use to watch 'live TV' would not have needed to be licensed. You'd have probably got nasty letters about it, but would be well within your rights not to pay for a license as you would not be using it.
Also, although it has no weight on this discussion, it's worth mentioning that TV licenses are per household, not per TV.
However, having said that, the BBC probably has to take adequate precautions to stop non-UK viewers watching the Olympic coverage as part of their deal with the organising committee to be the 'official broadcaster'. Sports broadcasting is a massive money maker, I'm sure! :)
I don't know whether this would mean a US citizen using a proxy to view the BBC feeds is breaking the law though. Interestingly, our extradition treaty with the US [1] "allows the US to extradite UK citizens and others for offences committed against US law, even though the alleged offence may have been committed in the UK by a person living and working in the UK", although there is apparently no reciprocal right. Therefore one can only assume it doesn't matter whether it is legal or not! (IANAL etc.)
I can't get any major networks over OTA, except for channels I wouldn't watch, ie Telemundo, Univision, HomeShopping,etc. I live about 50 miles from SF. It's really frustrating, not being able to watch the Olympics. But I'd hate to go through VPN. Just like my previous viewing of World Cup,I'd have to resort to non-English channels and learn a little bit of Spanish, although their coverage is focused more toward Spanish-speaking countries.
Thanks for the info. I will try that. I am subscribed to Comcast internet, but not TV. I have my fingers crossed. Hopefully I'll get some ClearQAM coming through the coax.
I am an Englishman sheltering from the Olympics in NYC (public transport in London was always going to be a mess) and even though I possess a UK TV license I had to tunnel through my machine at home to watch the opening ceremony.
It's a shame the BBC can't just sell a stream to people elsewhere in the world but the licenses under which they get the content will prevent it. Otherwise people could get content from the lowest bidder in the world, meaning commoditisation and a massive hit to the content owners who wouldn't get to sell the rights over and over again in different countries.
To me, the confusing part is why NBC only lets cable subscribers stream the content for free. I would guess that the cable companies are paying them to do that, but that is pure speculation on my part. If I can stream everything online, why would I purchase cable?
By confirming your cable subscription, you confirm you have access to MSNBC, CNBC, and Bravo, where the majority of Olympic events are broadcast. Only a small number of events are broadcast on NBC affiliate stations, mostly only in primetime.
I'm in London for the Olympics and have been blown away by the BBC - from the usability of their website, the lack of commercials, the generally high quality of commentary and online material, to the 24 hi-definition channels of Olympic coverage live on TV in the flat we are renting.
BBC iPlayer is restricted in Ireland unfortunately. I haven't specifically checked from Amazon's data centre though, but I'd imagine it has the same geographical restriction as my home broadband.
As a Canadian, I run into this bullshit all the time.
Comedy Central embedded videos, hulu, etc.
The whole thing seems like a perversion of the promise of the internet: to connect us all... It's double ironic in the OPs case, given the stated goals of the olympics.
Going around via VPN is well within my technical means, but I don't want to support the people who behave this way online, so I usually don't view the geo-walled content, or turn to the pirate bay.
Yes, but why can't I watch the coverage from whichever country I choose? Canadian coverage focuses on Canadian athletes. Perhaps I'm an ex-pat, and want to watch my home country, or just curious how events are portrayed elsewhere.
Well, that's a problem with the Olympics in general, not with a given country's broadcaster's implementation of the coverage they have purchased the rights to.
Different problems completely... But I agree with your sentiment either way.
I'm quite glad that even though Bell bought CTV in between Vancouver and London, they're still at least giving us every event streamed even WITHOUT cable/authentication.
"I use a service called Vyprvpn which is $14.99 a month. I get it as part of a bundle with a subscription to Giganews. That’s how I connect with a VPN to the UK. And you can too."
So the author ended up paying to watch the Olympics. Illegally, instead of legally, I would add.
I guess technically I'm paying for VPN service, but I would have been anyway, so I didn't buy something new.
And, I'm not certain it's illegal. Are you?
Is the legislation specific about where you must reside? What if you're consuming content but you're not in the UK?
If it is illegal for anyone to consume BBC content at the time of broadcast without a TV license regardless of location, what if someone outside of the UK paid for a TV License?
[IANAL] My understanding of copyright is that for events such as the Olympics, copyrights are often licensed licensed a country by country basis and that the retransmission of material across national boundaries is a violation. Doing so violates the author's right to control their work because it bipasses the arrangements the author has made to control their work. Incidently, this rests on the same legal principles upon which much of FOS software community operates (the license terms are merely different).
However, I would recommend speaking with an attorney familiar with such matters.
One difference might be the consequences of the subscription. A subscription to a big media outlet seems rather icky. I don't want to know what crap they'll try to feed you, pretending that it'll be worth your money. Subscribing to a VPN service presumably just expands your choices in a no frills way.
Answer: Get a cable TV subscription. If you don't want to "pirate," or be in a "grey area," then do what the license rights holder wants you to do and pony up. I pay for Frontier FiOS TV and can watch whatever events I want as part of my subscription. In many areas, the local cable company will have you installed in a day or two and you can go month-to-month. Comcast in Seattle is offering $29.99/month for the first 6 months, no contract, and that includes msnbc, CNBC, and Bravo.
To answer the point of "NBC pays the government," they do: for broadcast spectrum only. All the other channels with Olympics content are not covered by that payment.
The Olympics, as well as most other major world events, are transmitted via broadcast TV almost everywhere in the world. The whole operation and licensing rights are already paid for by ad space.
Almost everywhere, but not in the United States. Whether or not this is right or fair is left as an exercise to the reader; personally, I think it is not. However, the answer to the question is one of three things: subscribe to the required service, be in a grey area, or do not watch.
I honestly cannot see why we keep having these debates. OBVIOUSLY the content providers are making money doing exactly what they are now doing. Bypassing the restrictions and consuming the content anyway does nothing to change this situation except on the micro level. The only way to change the status quo is to demonstrate that the content is not sufficiently valuable to a sufficiently large group of people that the mechanism changes.
NBC, unlike most of the rest of the world, is not putting all, or even most, of its coverage out over-the-air. Many events will only be on pay channels like msnbc, Bravo, NBC Sports Network, and CNBC.
I tried calling comcast and they don't serve my address (it's a large apartment building). I specifically told them that I could care less if they actually installed it; I just wanted an account so I could get the olympics online. They claimed they couldn't do that though; the service had to be installable or they could get fined by some entity.
My only legal option is to pay DirectTV something like $800 for a one year subscription. Not happening..
Can't even get the terrestrial DTV signal due to buildings in my line of sight.
23 years. Its age is less of an issue than its size. It has 400+ units and just contracts out TV service to a local San Francisco outfit, Satel: http://www.yelp.com/biz/satel-san-francisco
Satel has a sattelite receiver on the roof that provides for the complex.
The only programming options are:
1. DirectTV (extremely expensive)
2. 'Basic' Cable, which gives only a subset of terrestrial broadcasts at only 480p. This service wouldn't qualify for nbcolympics regardless due to no cnbc, msnbc, etc.
This is not the answer. My grandmother was kind enough to give me her Comcast account info so I can stream through nbcolympics.com
Their system is garbage. IE9 and IE9 64-bit come to a screeching halt after 30 minutes of live streaming and have to be killed by task manager. Firefox Nightly x64 (my main browser) does the same thing after ballooning to 600MB of RAM. In Chrome the video starts to skip after 20 minutes when RAM usage hits about 300MB. So far Chrome + AdBlock is the only thing that's been stable so far.
Which brings me to why nbcolympics.com is garbage. They've managed to take a YouTube stream, and then surround it on all sides with 2 flash ad banners, commercial breaks during live streams, many many more commercial breaks during replays, and a drunken orgy of Web 2.0 tracking systems and social medias as far as the eye can see.
They've taken the most widely used video distribution platform and turned it into a hulking behemoth that destroys web browsers.
Ignoring all of that for a moment. NBC also has gaps in what you can watch on nbcolympics.com The opening ceremony wasn't streamed live, or streamed "live" when NBC showed it on TV. I'd have to check, but I don't think you can even watch a reply of it now. I wanted to watch some archery and the USA women's soccer match from earlier. While scrolling through the list I saw a reply link for every event...except gymnastics. NBC decided not to allow replays of that.
This just grows the amount of hatred I have for NBC since the 2010 games when they implemented this system and I couldn't get the same Comcast account to authenticate. So I was stuck with tape delay everything while my friends up north were watching everything live through cbc.ca
The trial run of NBC's system in 2008 was the best run they've had. No ads, no pay wall system, every event streamed live and available for replay afterward. It worked without a hitch.
Ah, but that's forcing you to buy something you don't want (a long-term cable TV subscription) to get something you do want (streaming access to the Olympics on the internet--no TV involved).
As several posters here have said, clearly there is a value to being able to watch the Olympic events you want, live. There is no reason NBC could not charge a fixed access fee for people who don't have one of the "sponsoring" pay TV services.
I'm in Germany, so I put the Olympics on TV. But I don't yet speak German, so after an hour I wanted to watch them in English.
I went to the NBC web site, but they geolocate your IP and only stream to US people. Fine, I'm used to this crap (lots of Youtube videos are blocked in Germany too) so I just fired up my proxy and tried again. This time I got through, only to find that they're asking me to log in to a cable provider first! What the hell!
After scouring the internet I found a huge list of Olympics streaming broadcasters. Turns out the BBC is broadcasting online too. So I try them--same thing, blocked outside of the UK! But this time I don't have a proxy in the UK, so I gave up and watched the damn thing in German.
I get the theory of having to go through a cable provider login to get the US Olympics. But what if you're a taxpaying UK citizen abroad for a while? You've paid your tax--but you still can't access the stream!
Wasn't the internet supposed to break through barriers like space and location? In the year 2012 am I seriously being denied an English-language broadcast of a global event just because my laptop is currently in Germany?
Sure I can jump through even more hoops and figure out a UK-based VPN or some crap. But the point is I shouldn't have to do this! We're in 2012 people! Why even have the internet if we're just going to lock up information according to where you live?
Yep, we are in 2012, yet just because some things are possible (like access to TV from every source across the globe), doesn't mean to say those things are permissible.
> Wasn't the internet supposed to break through barriers like space and location?
The Internet philosophy eschews these things, but the implementation simply ignores them. Of course the incumbents desire to reimplement their archaic business models on top of TCP/IP. It's up to us to carry the philosophy and create higher level protocols that are resistant to such things; fiefdom-based HTTP certainly isn't.
It not only ignores them but people purposely place these restrictions on them for greedy reasons.
Frankly, in my experience it doesn't take a lot to enable multicast and doing it internet wide _shouldn't_ be that big of a deal so we can handle all the streaming of live events with little worry - but the "powers that be" want to restrict everything online and it's frustrating, angering and downright dangerous attitude to have as a defacto "standard".
This time the "powers that be" are playing against the US consumer. I hope that this event sparks some empathy between the US and rest of the World. What many of the US consumers are suffering with the Olympics (broadcasting delay and accessibility), is what the RoW suffers when trying to consume US media (film and TV).
Monetising today's content with an old distribution model is a dead business, and will only help support the consumption of "pirated" content.
My mother doesn't even know what a VPN is. Even if she did, she wouldn't know how to use one to watch the bbc coverage abroad as a license fee paying UK-citizen.
Having read through this whole discussion a couple of times now, I find myself wondering why either NBC or the Olympics can't do the "smart" thing - sell me access directly. Sure if they want to do a partner offer for "free" they can do so. But why not let me buy a $30 pass for the games? I think there are a lot of us who don't want a cable package who wouldn't mind paying for the content we do want.
You could offer to pay ~£8k in licence fees for life time access to UK TV. Of course, if you watch and don't pay, you will live in fear of a prison sentence. Luckily, extradition from the US to the UK is less likely than the reverse, so you needn't lose as much sleep as eg Garry McKinnon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon)
For the winter Olympics, I had a VPS provisioned with a Toronto-based provider: setup Apache w/ a password protected mod_proxy. Voila, I could watch live curling and luge in the office. Total cost was less than $30 USD.
190 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadI use a similar one to access Facebook when traveling to China.
I normally wouldn't be overly concerned about it, probably just a bit flustered, but this is a global event that occurs twice a decade. I feel this should really be something public broadcasters should control, not mega-corporations.
The Olympics requires the services credential.
To watch on your pc, they partnered with Youtube Live: http://www.youtube.com/user/nosnlsport
which gives me: "The uploader has not made this video available in your country. " which is a bit strange (living in the Netherlands).
Fortunately it is quite easy to proxy stuff via the UK :)
Personally, I prefer www.unblock-us.com
Using the service is trivial for anybody on HN. Just a matter of setting your DNS settings to specific servers. That's it.
Technically... I'm still trying to figure that one out. I think what they do is handle the IP check from the service, and then pass off the stream to your computer. This would make sense since the stream server would be different than the IP check server. This is great because then only a very limited subset of traffic is flowing through their servers so you get "native" speeds.
I'm confused because I thought that geo-restrictions were handled by IP address, so I'm not sure how this gets around that.
Thanks for the tip, though, and kudos to Unblock-Us for being one of a VERY few sites that let you trial their service without giving them payment details.
edit: using unotelly.com's DNS for co.uk and bbchdsodsecure-f.akamaihd.net works for me.
server=/bbc.co.uk/###.###.###.###,
ip would be for the alternate nameserver
Primary DNS: 64.250.122.104 Secondary DNS: 199.167.30.144
Here's how to do this in Ubuntu 12.04. The DNS has changed in 12.04 to use NetworkManager, which makes the process more convoluted than it should be. The below instructions could be improved but it'll get you some BBC Olympics coverage.
# https://gist.github.com/3202101
Ubuntu 12.04
$ nslookup bbc.co.uk # you should see a UK IP e.g. 212.58.241.131
$ vi /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf # comment out dnsmasq #dns=dnsmasq
# save+quit
$ vi /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf
prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;
$ service network-manager restart
# create a new dnsmasq.conf with unotelly California DNS 184.169.139.227 206.214.214.28 # note that server=192.168.11.1 is my router (which handles my upstream DNS) and you'll need to change that IP. $ vi /etc/dnsmasq.conf
server=/bbc.co.uk/206.214.214.28212.58.241.131 server=/co.uk/206.214.214.28 server=/bbchdsodsecure-f.akamaihd.net/206.214.214.28 server=/bbchdsodsecure-a.akamaihd.net/206.214.214.28 server=/bbchdsodsecure-b.akamaihd.net/206.214.214.28 server=/bbchdsodsecure-c.akamaihd.net/206.214.214.28 server=/bbchdsodsecure-d.akamaihd.net/206.214.214.28 server=/bbchdsodsecure-e.akamaihd.net/206.214.214.28 server=/bbc.co.uk.edgesuite.net/206.214.214.28 server=/bbcfmhds.vo.llnwd.net/206.214.214.28 server=192.168.11.1
# save+quit
$ nohup /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --no-resolv --keep-in-foreground --no-hosts --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/var/run/sendsigs.omit.d/network-manager.dnsmasq.pid --listen-address=127.0.0.1 --conf-file=/etc/dnsmasq.conf --cache-size=0 --proxy-dnssec &
$ tail -f /var/log/syslog
$ nslookup bbc.co.uk # you should see unotelly proxy servers e.g. uk-cluster.unostructure.com
Edit: Even though I live in the UK, this is how I watch TV because with a bit of scripting it's a lot more convenient than having a TV.
this is the official european broadcast stream. simply the best, every event in live and you can also replay them. plus there is no commentator here, just the raw broadcast (i hate when commentators talk too much...)
I can't imagine coax works well as an antenna, considering it's shielded to prevent RF interference.
The "+ syntax" does not belong to Gmail, nor was Gmail the inventor of same. foo+bar@domain.net is an ancient tradition, dating back almost to the dawn of SMTP. Of course, the interpretation of the local part is entirely up to the MTA handling it, but foo+bar is pretty widespread. Certainly Sendmail supports it.
Note that I believe you need to pay the licence fee to legally watch iPlayer (IIRC it pops up a dialog the first time you run it to confirm you've paid). So even in the UK you have to "pay for TV" to get this service. It costs approx £12/month.
http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_tv_progs/...
Some European countries' laws haven't caught up the same way the UK has. For instance, you can legally watch the Swedish SVT's live streams without a licence fee. Other countries have gone further - in Denmark they either implemented or were just debating a law where you have to pay the license fee if you own a PC or Mobile phone that can watch streaming video.
All Europeans can legally watch the EBU/Eurovision steams though, I believe. http://www.eurovisionsports.tv/london2012/index.html
UK ISPs appear to throttle iPlayer traffic so ironically using a proxy might be worthwhile in the UK too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Finances
I also don't think it's true to suggest ISPs are throttling iPlayer specifically. The bbc has said it will name and shame any ISP that does.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/362950/bbc-will-alert-...
On point 2 why would the BBC be spending money to develop a system to indicate throttling if there wasn't even an "appearance" (as I claimed) that there was some throttling. Surely they'd want to show at least that there was an appearance of throttling before starting such a project?
FWIW my own experience with one of the top UK ISPs has been of quite poor service for iPlayer - significantly lower bandwidth is used for iPlayer connection than for other streaming sites. That is watching the same show in low quality on iPlayer I get significantly poorer connection than watching in higher quality streaming from some other site - this gives the appearance that iPlayer is being throttled.
Not entirely true. If you only use iPlayer for catchup, you don't need a TV license. But if you use iPlayer to watch TV programmes as they are being broadcast on TV, you do.
What did I miss?
Edit: Thanks for the quick answers.
Legally, I’m unclear of if an American connecting on a VPN to a live stream in the UK is breaking the law. I would guess that it hasn’t really come up with the TV license people yet.
I don't know about the UK law, but nearby Ireland has a similar "TV Licence". The law there is not "you need a licence to watch TV", but "if you're in Ireland and you have something that's capable of recieving TV signals, then you need a TV licence".
If the UK is similar, then it's not "watch BBC" that requires a licence, but "owning a TV in the UK". The OP almost certainly does not own a TV in the UK, so almost certainly not need a TV licence.
(NB: There may or may not be terms & conditions on the iPlayer website which say you may only access it if you are in UK / have a TV licence / etc., which might make the above the illegal (but not for TV licence reasons). I'm suprised the Olympics works for them, usually BBC iPlayer stuff uses GeoIP to block it from non-UK IP addresses.)
> You must be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV. It makes no difference what equipment you use - whether it’s a laptop, PC, mobile phone, digital box, DVD/video recorder or a TV set - you still need a licence.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
But has been regarded as applying to the BBC's iPlayer - you can watch the "watch again" (PVR function) but need a license to watch the live stream.
The iplayer is only available in the UK - but that's a contractual deal with the BBC, not a legal point - so if you had a VPN that worked in the UK then it's a civil matter between you and the BBC
All the BBC radio content is available for free worldwide. Although Americans should be aware that Radio4 contains dangerous levels of sarcasm, satire and irony and might not be suitable for FOX viewers
Also, although it has no weight on this discussion, it's worth mentioning that TV licenses are per household, not per TV.
However, having said that, the BBC probably has to take adequate precautions to stop non-UK viewers watching the Olympic coverage as part of their deal with the organising committee to be the 'official broadcaster'. Sports broadcasting is a massive money maker, I'm sure! :)
I don't know whether this would mean a US citizen using a proxy to view the BBC feeds is breaking the law though. Interestingly, our extradition treaty with the US [1] "allows the US to extradite UK citizens and others for offences committed against US law, even though the alleged offence may have been committed in the UK by a person living and working in the UK", although there is apparently no reciprocal right. Therefore one can only assume it doesn't matter whether it is legal or not! (IANAL etc.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_Act_2003
It's way more versatile than signing up for just VPN.
I am an Englishman sheltering from the Olympics in NYC (public transport in London was always going to be a mess) and even though I possess a UK TV license I had to tunnel through my machine at home to watch the opening ceremony.
It's a shame the BBC can't just sell a stream to people elsewhere in the world but the licenses under which they get the content will prevent it. Otherwise people could get content from the lowest bidder in the world, meaning commoditisation and a massive hit to the content owners who wouldn't get to sell the rights over and over again in different countries.
I wrote up some instructions about how to use EC2 as a web proxy here - http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/how-to-use-ec2-as-a-web-proxy/ - not sure if it would work in Amazon's Ireland data center, but worth a try.
Comedy Central embedded videos, hulu, etc.
The whole thing seems like a perversion of the promise of the internet: to connect us all... It's double ironic in the OPs case, given the stated goals of the olympics.
Going around via VPN is well within my technical means, but I don't want to support the people who behave this way online, so I usually don't view the geo-walled content, or turn to the pirate bay.
The iOS app is great, and the web portal is great, and it's free.
Different problems completely... But I agree with your sentiment either way.
I also tend to do the same I can use a VPN or figure out some way to get around restrictions but then I think why?
If I'm blocked I'm not going out of my way to generate ad revenue or support such behaviour, it's called the World Wide Web for a reason.
So the author ended up paying to watch the Olympics. Illegally, instead of legally, I would add.
And, I'm not certain it's illegal. Are you?
Is the legislation specific about where you must reside? What if you're consuming content but you're not in the UK?
If it is illegal for anyone to consume BBC content at the time of broadcast without a TV license regardless of location, what if someone outside of the UK paid for a TV License?
However, I would recommend speaking with an attorney familiar with such matters.
So, really now it should just be a question of the rights holder allowing me in the US to watch something broadcast in the UK that I paid for.
To answer the point of "NBC pays the government," they do: for broadcast spectrum only. All the other channels with Olympics content are not covered by that payment.
I honestly cannot see why we keep having these debates. OBVIOUSLY the content providers are making money doing exactly what they are now doing. Bypassing the restrictions and consuming the content anyway does nothing to change this situation except on the micro level. The only way to change the status quo is to demonstrate that the content is not sufficiently valuable to a sufficiently large group of people that the mechanism changes.
No. NBC is broadcasting the Olympics over-the-air all across the US.
I tried calling comcast and they don't serve my address (it's a large apartment building). I specifically told them that I could care less if they actually installed it; I just wanted an account so I could get the olympics online. They claimed they couldn't do that though; the service had to be installable or they could get fined by some entity.
My only legal option is to pay DirectTV something like $800 for a one year subscription. Not happening..
Can't even get the terrestrial DTV signal due to buildings in my line of sight.
Satel has a sattelite receiver on the roof that provides for the complex.
The only programming options are:
1. DirectTV (extremely expensive)
2. 'Basic' Cable, which gives only a subset of terrestrial broadcasts at only 480p. This service wouldn't qualify for nbcolympics regardless due to no cnbc, msnbc, etc.
Their system is garbage. IE9 and IE9 64-bit come to a screeching halt after 30 minutes of live streaming and have to be killed by task manager. Firefox Nightly x64 (my main browser) does the same thing after ballooning to 600MB of RAM. In Chrome the video starts to skip after 20 minutes when RAM usage hits about 300MB. So far Chrome + AdBlock is the only thing that's been stable so far.
Which brings me to why nbcolympics.com is garbage. They've managed to take a YouTube stream, and then surround it on all sides with 2 flash ad banners, commercial breaks during live streams, many many more commercial breaks during replays, and a drunken orgy of Web 2.0 tracking systems and social medias as far as the eye can see.
They've taken the most widely used video distribution platform and turned it into a hulking behemoth that destroys web browsers.
Ignoring all of that for a moment. NBC also has gaps in what you can watch on nbcolympics.com The opening ceremony wasn't streamed live, or streamed "live" when NBC showed it on TV. I'd have to check, but I don't think you can even watch a reply of it now. I wanted to watch some archery and the USA women's soccer match from earlier. While scrolling through the list I saw a reply link for every event...except gymnastics. NBC decided not to allow replays of that.
This just grows the amount of hatred I have for NBC since the 2010 games when they implemented this system and I couldn't get the same Comcast account to authenticate. So I was stuck with tape delay everything while my friends up north were watching everything live through cbc.ca
The trial run of NBC's system in 2008 was the best run they've had. No ads, no pay wall system, every event streamed live and available for replay afterward. It worked without a hitch.
As several posters here have said, clearly there is a value to being able to watch the Olympic events you want, live. There is no reason NBC could not charge a fixed access fee for people who don't have one of the "sponsoring" pay TV services.
I'm in Germany, so I put the Olympics on TV. But I don't yet speak German, so after an hour I wanted to watch them in English.
I went to the NBC web site, but they geolocate your IP and only stream to US people. Fine, I'm used to this crap (lots of Youtube videos are blocked in Germany too) so I just fired up my proxy and tried again. This time I got through, only to find that they're asking me to log in to a cable provider first! What the hell!
After scouring the internet I found a huge list of Olympics streaming broadcasters. Turns out the BBC is broadcasting online too. So I try them--same thing, blocked outside of the UK! But this time I don't have a proxy in the UK, so I gave up and watched the damn thing in German.
I get the theory of having to go through a cable provider login to get the US Olympics. But what if you're a taxpaying UK citizen abroad for a while? You've paid your tax--but you still can't access the stream!
Wasn't the internet supposed to break through barriers like space and location? In the year 2012 am I seriously being denied an English-language broadcast of a global event just because my laptop is currently in Germany?
Sure I can jump through even more hoops and figure out a UK-based VPN or some crap. But the point is I shouldn't have to do this! We're in 2012 people! Why even have the internet if we're just going to lock up information according to where you live?
The Internet philosophy eschews these things, but the implementation simply ignores them. Of course the incumbents desire to reimplement their archaic business models on top of TCP/IP. It's up to us to carry the philosophy and create higher level protocols that are resistant to such things; fiefdom-based HTTP certainly isn't.
Frankly, in my experience it doesn't take a lot to enable multicast and doing it internet wide _shouldn't_ be that big of a deal so we can handle all the streaming of live events with little worry - but the "powers that be" want to restrict everything online and it's frustrating, angering and downright dangerous attitude to have as a defacto "standard".
This time the "powers that be" are playing against the US consumer. I hope that this event sparks some empathy between the US and rest of the World. What many of the US consumers are suffering with the Olympics (broadcasting delay and accessibility), is what the RoW suffers when trying to consume US media (film and TV).
Monetising today's content with an old distribution model is a dead business, and will only help support the consumption of "pirated" content.
Exactly, everyone is now able to find a quick and easy to use VPN. Wasn't that easy few years ago.
It seems to work from the webproxy i used but i'm not sure my ip was properly hidden.
Anyway, for once french television is not behind, they broadcast all the sports live on their website without any commentary.