As an American that travels a lot, I know that it can be relaxing to chill out to some American TV shows while abroad. It seems kind of silly - to go overseas and then want to watch American TV. But for expats who've been away from their home country for a while, it can be a comforting bit of nostalgia to catch up on shows you've missed while abroad. For travelers, it can be some well needed respite from taking pictures and running around all day. I'm sure the same thing goes for British people abroad. And in the same fashion that I'm able to stream MY favorite shows, you too can watch UK TV abroad.

How does that work?

Well, though the streaming devices are different, the way to access restricted sites it the same. You see, most of these sites are blocked by firewalls that block ranges of IP address. In this case, they block anything that's originating from outside the country. If you want to access UK TV on BBC iPlayer, Channel 4, Demand 5, or Sky Go, then you're going to need a UK IP address. Anything outside the UK will give you the popup message that their service is currently unavailable in your country. With the exception of a few countries connected to iPlayer, pretty much every country is unable to access these sites, even if you're a paying member.

So you need to get a UK IP. But how can you get a British IP if you're outside the country?

With a VPN

VPN are used for private, AKA anonymous surfing. What that means to us is that we can get an IP address from any country to mask our own. So long as a VPN server is located in The UK, and we have the login information for this server, we can connect to it, and use it as a 'proxy' to UK websites.

Typically, a VPN service will allow users to connect to several different countries. So you could potentially get access to Spanish, American, Brazilian, Canadian, or even Australian TV. If that doesn't interest you, that's OK. You can stick with the UK servers.

Once you're signed up and signed in, you can watch UK TV abroad just like you were back home. Just go to your favorite site, log in, and stream. You may run into the problem that the website still blocks you even though you are signed into the VPN server. If this happens, just clear the cookies for this site, and you should be able to access the site this time.

You can connect to a VPN on Android, iPhone & iPad, Linux, Windows, and even Nokia. Just remember that for streaming on these devices, the site you want to stream from needs an appropriate app. For example, though you can connect to a VPN on Nokia phones, most sites don't have appropriate app for Symbian operating systems.