One of the attractions of being able to watch TV online is catching shows live. Not just TV shows - I guess most of the time seeing EastEnders a day or two late isn't such a big deal. But live broadcasting of sports is a big deal. If you're a football fan who's out of The UK, but your team is playing and you just HAVE to see them, the a VPN could be a solution for you. This is the most common way to watch UK TV overseas for a number of reasons.

VPNs work everywhere. You'll see in this article that I do a lot of comparing of VPNs with proxies. This is because proxies are another way to watch UK TV online from other countries. Like VPNs, proxies are able to change the IP address of your phone or computer. But proxies don't work everywhere. Especially in countries that limit Internet access - countries like China, UAE, and Egypt limit internet access. The automatic response of internet users is to change their IP. Proxies are an easy way to do this, and often times free. So you can guess that proxies are the first tool to get axed in these countries. There are many proxies sites that don't work because of internet censorship, depending on where you are of course.

Reliability is another issue with proxies. If you have a professional proxy service, sure, connection can be just as reliable as a VPN. But you'll be paying for it as well! Part of the attraction of proxies is that there are many free proxy sites, and free proxy servers to connect to. However, these are unprofessional services, often set up by inexperienced individuals. On top of all this unreliability, you also run the risk that the administrators of these proxies will put your private data at risk - exposing you to malware and IP tracking tools/programs inadvertently or maliciously.

So now that we've established that VPNs are clearly a better way to change your IP when you want to watch UK TV overseas, lets get into what you can do once you've changed your IP.

So with a British IP, you can do anything you normally would on a computer in The UK. BBC iPlayer, Sky TV, ITV, Demand 4 and Channel 4 are all available. YouTube UK, Zattoo, and other video streaming sites are also OK to browse, along with music streaming sites like Spotify and Last FM. And of course sports fans will enjoy live broadcasting sites like Live Sky Sports, NFL Live, and BBC Sports. There are of course more option. Your best bet is to try to surf the site you want to stream TV/Movies/Music from, and if you're blocked, sign up for a VPN service with servers in the UK. You never know, there might be service in the country you're in. For example, BBC iPlayer has announced that it's going to open up access to some European countries.

When you sign up for a VPN service, be sure that you order a package with UK VPN servers. It's the servers in The UK that will give you a UK IP address Some services separate their server packages, and customers must choose between variety of server locations. Other services may have all their servers available in one package, which means you'll probably get access to German, Canadian, and American VPN servers as well! Wherever the VPN server is, that will be the location of your IP address, and you'll be able to access websites from that area.