Watch the Olympics from anywhere: this actually works

https://gist.github.com/3195652

by irq • 14 years ago

116 56 14 years ago

gist.github.com

irq7• 14 years ago

If the BBC changes their IP addresses and I haven't updated the IP list, you can simply adjust your VPN client settings to route all traffic over the VPN connection. Viscosity makes this easy. That will always work, but will cause other Internet services to think you're in England, and make things feel a bit slower overall.

coderrr3• 14 years ago

As I've said in other comments. This is fun and hackerish but it's cheaper and simpler to just sign up for a VPN for a month that has UK gateways. Like https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ for $6.95

fl3tch• 14 years ago

That's what I've been using and it works great. Some of their US nodes are slow, probably because overloaded, but I maxed out my 20 Mbit internet connection testing their UK London server.

Edit: I should also point out that a $20 Linode box just for VPN is overkill. If you really want to go the VPS route, there are plenty of sub-$10 VPS providers in the UK.

coderrr3• 14 years ago

If you email me at coderrr.contact@gmail.com I can try to help figure out why you get slow speeds on some of our US servers. None of our servers are even running near capacity.

dcesiel• 14 years ago

Or you could just use the unlimited TunnelBear VPN for $5 a month.

irq7• 14 years ago

And potentially send sensitive traffic through an untrusted third party. Some people are comfortable with that, some people aren't.

rorrr• 14 years ago

You can disconnect from the VPN after you're done watching.

brackin2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure about the legalities abroad but in the UK at least it's illegal to watch this stream without a TV licence and they do try and prosecute people if they can find an address attached to your IP, obviously this isn't possible through this method but just a heads up.

Another option which doesn't require a tv licence is TVCatchup.com which legally streams UK TV channels (to the UK only).

Although I will say the BBC interface is far better and allows you to go back to the start if you press play on the live player half way through and of course is ad free.

Regardless, I condone this as NBC should allow everyone to watch online live and if they don't people will go to better alternatives.

mseebach3• 14 years ago

> they do try and prosecute people if they can find an address attached to your IP

How? Will the ISPs actually just hand those out?

brackin2• 14 years ago

They do a surprising amount, they seriously have vans that drive around scanning to see if you're watching television on a physical TV and if so if you don't have a licence they'll fine you

I'm not sure if they are actually finding out if you have a TV licence on the stream yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they are/do.

corin_• 14 years ago

Using TVCatcup.com absolutely does require a license - the license rule is about "watching live TV in the UK", it doesn't matter if you're doing it on a TV, from iPlayer or from a third party.

wolf550e• 14 years ago

If I don't care about watching it live, can I just get the recording in a torrent?

njs12345• 14 years ago

There are definitely a lot of recordings on Usenet...

icebraining• 14 years ago

Sure, the opening ceremony has more than 8000 seeds: http://torrentz.eu/search?f=olympics

kellishaver• 14 years ago

I really wish I could just subscribe to iPlayer. I don't want to subscribe to a cable or satellite service that I wouldn't use (and then pay extra for BBC channels), and I like a lot of their content. I'd gladly pay the BBC money for easy, legal online access to it.

AffableSpatula• 14 years ago

I'd like to see this happen just so that British taxes aren't being spent providing free coverage to people in other countries.

dasil003• 14 years ago

If they wanted to do that they'd need to have global streaming rights, which would cost much much much much more than the marginal bandwidth taken up by the fraction of users with the tech savvy to set up a proxy.

stoked• 14 years ago

I did something similar to watch hulu from Canada awhile back but I had split tunnelling disabled where all traffic goes through the vpn so no messing around with static routes and ips. Also setup a local DNS cache on the VPS and configured openvpn to use the VPS DNS cache when connected. CDN's generally use the ip of the DNS request to determine where to direct your browser to download the media, static host entries would avoid the DNS request though. I no longer have it setup, but I do have my config backed up somewhere. If someone's interested I'll look for it.

webmonkeyuk• 14 years ago

I reckon it'll just be a matter of time until the BBC start blocking traffic from IP ranges that look like VPS hosting companies.

Axsuul• 14 years ago

Hopefully this method won't become too mainstream since it requires some hacking.

idan• 14 years ago

I found this resource to be helpful in actually getting the routes working. In particular, setting up NAT to forward traffic from the VPN to the outside world:

https://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/ubuntu-10.10-m...

davej• 14 years ago

Or you can just tunnel through the ssh connection to your VM, I do this all the time to watch BBC.

    ssh -D 9050 [user]@[vm.ip]

You now have a SOCKS proxy on port 9050. Done!

enimodas• 14 years ago

while you can easily set a SOCKS proxy for your browser, flash will still use your normal connection.

seabee2• 14 years ago

Which is more efficient if the sites don't care where the flash connection comes from (like, apparently, the BBC)

gsa• 14 years ago

Flash with Firefox on Linux respects the SOCKS proxy setting.

SG-2• 14 years ago

flash in OSX will work just fine through a SOCKS connection that you setup in systems prefs -> network. however it won't work with just an HTTP proxy.

irq7• 14 years ago

Indeed, Flash on OS X (at least, in Mountain Lion anyway) does not respect proxy settings. Additionally, the Flash BBC iPlayer will not work if it connects from the United States, despite what SG- has said below.

DanielRibeiro• 14 years ago

You may also wish to add -C2qTnN[1]. At least -C2 for compression.

[1] https://calomel.org/firefox_ssh_proxy.html

irq7• 14 years ago

As I stated at the top of my gist (did you read it?) and in other comments here, this simply does not work using the latest Flash in Mountain Lion. In this situation, Flash ignores proxy settings, and streaming does not work.

cientifico• 14 years ago

The same thing that the people need to access "How I need your mother".

After a few years, the easiest solution is to just buy a prxoy. Normally cheaper.

MrKurtHaeusler• 14 years ago

Or just sign up for a distance learning course from a UK university. Aberdeen gives you a proxy, the OU as far as I know, doesn't.

bgentry• 14 years ago

Works great. This way you don't have to send all your traffic through the VPN, only the requests that are used to geolocate you.

You can use the same method to bypass MLB.tv blackout restrictions.

Instead of a Linode box, I use a privatetunnel.com VPN (free starter available) and modify the config:

  route-nopull # (to avoid sending all traffic through)
  route outbound-ip netmask # ex: route 8.8.8.8 255.255.255.0

vegardx• 14 years ago

If you're in europe you can watch it live at NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), but the commentary will ofcourse be in Norwegian. NRK has excellent coverage, with 7 (9 including NRK1 and NRK2) dedicated channels.

See more: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl...

Watch the Olympics from anywhere: this actually works

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