English TV channels

[der]

Hi, looking for some advice. 'Satcure' mentioned on a topic today that FilmOn tv has now gone to paid subscription. We have been watching U.K. TV through FilmOn but the feed wasn't great, so I don't want to subscribe to something that won't be stable. Any suggestions? Is it possible to get free view with a satellite dish? I'm not so interested in catch-up tv. We did the ip hide thing for a short while which meant we could watch BBC iplayer on an iPad, but the U.K. based ip we had to use made our internet slower. What we want is some stable connection to live U.K. TV. The worst part is missing Masterchef tonight!

[Louise]

Yes, this is catastrophe, having watched almost entirely uk tv via filmon for must be three years. The only answer has to be a vpn but there seem to be no free vpns worth bothering with. I vaguely remember the fount of all knowledge, Kilkis, saying he used one he was happy with that was budget friendly. Certainly filmon wanting 15$/month is out of the question.

[peebee]

I have heard that IPVanish is good, they are currently charging $78 a year (£60) they also do a monthly rate of $10 so you can try it before splashing out on a 12 month sub.
There is also ExpressVPN, which is rated at 4/5 stars and comes in at $100 or $12.95 for the month.
Plenty out there to choose from if you search `VPN reviews'

[Phild]

I use 'Unlocator' for UK terrestrial channels - it's not a VPN (it uses the DNS system to fool the host into thinking that your IP address is in their 'allowed' zone).

Looking at reviews for it today, it doesn't seem to get great reviews - but then, I've been 'in the business' for many years and I know how to set it up correctly. I have very rarely had any problems with it.

And it's only $4.95 per month.

[Louise]

Thank you, I am going to try the Unlocator free trial and see how it goes. I did get in a bit of a mess last night with a so-called 'free' vpn which located me in Bulgaria and got me nowhere!

[Kilkis]

I use Unblock My Telly as a paid for VPN. The Standard UK VPN service is currently £35.99 per year. It used to offer a smart DNS service but that doesn't seem to exist anymore. They are specifically selling it as a service for streaming UK TV to non-UK locations so their servers are pretty fast. I just did a Speed Test with and without the VPN and there was little difference in overall speed, although through the VPN it was a bit more up and down. The ping is also a lot longer through the VPN, i.e. 78 ms compared to 21 ms. It's very easy to turn on and off once you have set up the connection if, like me, you don't like the idea of doing things like financial transactions through a VPN

I also subscribe to [url]Expat Vision[/url] and use that for watching TV rather than using things like iPlayer through a VPN. The basic service is £12.50 per month and the top service is £29.00 per month. There is an initial cost of £119 for the box although it is possible to get the service on other devices such as tablets.

Probably the best free service is Kodi, which you can load onto virtually any device I think. I haven't used it so I can't give further information but it was discussed on a previous thread.

Warwick

[Louise]

I am living in the stone ages on a small pension. I do not have a smart tv so that rules out several options and I am also using a very aged windows pc with XP and that rules out everything else as far as I can see!

However Unlocator seems to be working although what a lot of faffing about and there is a hiccup with ch5 this morning. It also requires you to change your pc to UK time which is doing my head in LOL. Unlocator seems to be the cheapest option. I have the 7-day trial but maybe during that time more suggestions may appear on this thread.

Thanks for suggestions so far.

[Kilkis]

For most of the solutions you don't need a smart TV as such just one with an HDMI input. They were pretty common long before smart TVs appeared.

Warwick

[Louise]

I'm not totally sure what I'm talking about most of the time, but I seem to have already acquired two adaptors and extra cables when I put in the Greek tv Digibox and then had to have a new little box for the small satellite dish I have. There seems to be nowhere else to plug anything else into now. I daren't touch anything now in case the whole system falls apart!

[Kilkis]

Those who have been using FilmOn might like to have a look at this site. Sandra Smith passed the link on to me. She got it from a friend who got it from a Spanish ex-pat forum. It's a bit grainy but no worse than FilmOn.

Warwick

[allan]

Brilliant.

Thanks Warwick and Sandra

[Louise]

Yes, brilliant indeed. Many thanks for the link.

[Carolina]

I use Media Hint https://mediahint.com/support/channels

You just download an extension which installs in Chrome or Firefox. You can watch live or catch up.

Cost is $3.95 per month, cancel anytime or $39.50 per year.

Free 7 days trial.

[Kilkis]

Just for clarity, in case some people don't realise it, Media Hint uses a smart dns service to make you appear to be in a different geographic location, e.g. the UK. It doesn't provide media content. It allows you to access media content that would be blocked from your geographic location, e.g. BBC iPlayer, ITV Player etc.

Warwick

[der]

Unlocator didn't work for me today. I just signed up but today I keep getting an error message when I try to access iplayer or itv.