With the cultural capital that BBC had especially 7 to 10 years ago, I'm pretty sure they would have been at league with Netflix and the like if they had opened it up. Dr Who was huge back then in the US, and you had Sherlock and a few other shows. I think people were just pirating it (?) but lots of people I knew were huge fans.

Dr. Who was on Netflix for a long time, except maybe whatever recent season, and more recently HBO Max

There was something called Kangaroo [1] which was a partnership between BBC, ITV and C4 but it got blocked by the competition commission. Now it's run under Britbox I think!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(video_on_demand)

Absolutely.

Given a) they started experimenting with iPlayer pretty early in the streaming came, and b) they have a huge and valuable back catalogue, it's always amazed me that they didn't open up pay-per-view and subscription options for an ex-UK audience.

I've always suspected there's a good reason why not behind the scenes - maybe because a successful PPV operation would lend huge weight to people in the UK seeking to abolish the license fee?

Shows are often made by production companies on contract and licensed for domestic distribution. Licensing for international distribution might be significantly more expensive.

Yes but they would get more revenue from it too.

Maybe you should start shopping the business case for it around then.

They might get some revenue, but they would need to build and maintain a streaming service with payments, and that’s not free. They might also be limited by contracts with local broadcasters, which give them exclusive rights to online distribution within their country, even if they do not exercise them now.

Its not the only way.

Smart DNS providers like Getflix provide access to BBC Iplayer and a ton of other streaming services too.

Basically you use their DNS servers and they handle the geo-unblocking.

a few years ago I moved outside the UK and spent the best part of 3 months (on and off) trying to access BBC content, legally, still holding residency, paying domiciliary and employment taxes, and paying for a bladdy TV loicence

of course, I wanted to do this for as close to free as possible, since plugging an aerial into a tv also cost next to nothing

VPNs were already being detected and banned. I tried at least 4 extensively, including tcp, udp, socks, wg, obfuscated servers, etc. to no avail

dodgy residential/mobile proxies were too unreliable for live 720p m3u streams, not to mention expensive

I went through a few cheap linux VPSs with UK ip addresses, forwarding their web streams to my tv outside the UK, until I found one that seemed to work well. so much so I even invested in some fancy routing through intermediary countries for almost jitter-free stability

until a few weeks later, back to the same old shite -- everything 403 Unauthorised

after yet a few more weeks of furious head-scratching shame over the stable-now-vanished CBeebies and BritComs daily consumption, I concluded and confirmed the BBC had just started detecting and banning datacentre IPs more aggressively

it was at this ebb I discovered the wonderful world of illegal IPTV streams and adopted a fuck you too, BBC attitude

I used a small independent proxy company that I paid £50 a year annually through PayPal. I think they must've been small enough to fly under the radar of the detection algorithms. When I went onto google maps connected to the proxy, it always thought I was in Dubai, which gives you an idea of the clientele.

Maybe it was something to do with the fact that it was a Proxy and not a VPN, though I'm not sure if this makes it any less detectable. I even had a Firefox extension that automatically turned on the proxy when opening iPlayer tabs! It worked very well, though I wish I could've paid the license fee and just got access.

I dabbled with free and cheap paid-for proxies which were either injecting javascript or too flaky for live video. I saw a few of those smaller providers, but the initial outlay would have been too risky, because I am convinced the BBC throw a lot of money at residential geolocation, so if they haven't already their IP address blocks will be blacklisted at some point in the near future

interesting about Dubai though, makes me wonder if they have some sort of expat or economic deal with them. if Google thinks you're there, you can bet BBC do too. I discovered they use multiple CDNs and delivery mechanisms as fallback/best effort, which sometimes (but not always) sieved most (but not all) VPN locations in an indeterminate (but authoritatively just) fashion, so perhaps Dubai is whitelisted on one of those. might investigate further at some point if I can swallow some bile first

Email is in my profile if you wanna find out more about the proxy service I used!

I also used some UK shell provider (via SOCKS proxy + Putty) in the past and it worked really well. My guess is that there’s some there’s kind of threshold/concurrent connection that iPlayer looks at per IP address.

It’s pretty silly though, I would absolutely pay for a TV license if given the opportunity. Dear BBC: Shut up and take my money!

how far in the past ago, during nascent video streaming pre-VPN days? with live tv as well as VOD? if there is a relatively cheap, concrete solution I did not uncover which has been stable for over a year I would buy that wizard a thimbleful of scumble

This was about 15 years ago, definitely before when VPNs got popular… Clarkson was still hosting Top Gear. I seem to recall getting so irked that BBC America was something like 6-12 months behind current Top Gear episodes that it lead me down this path of ‘stealing’ iPlayer. It actually opened the door for me to content that I would have otherwise seen or known about, like obscure comedy shows on Channel 4 or the much better UK version of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

The shell provider I used was Phurix, not if they are still around or not.

Perhaps roll your own VPN using a home router that can act as a VPN server? That way you can use your home internet connection...assuming its upload speed is fast enough.

A shame BBC can't accommodate its paying customers who happen to be abroad.

yes in hindsight, had I known the BBC would stoop, I could have set up something from an actual home IP. whether that be forwarding their web streams or forwarding a few OTA DVB-T2 streams. but even that could require physical presence for emergency debugs, reboots

Can you or someone explain why so many Brits want to watch UK television from abroad?

I’m French living abroad and have never missed French TV. The quality of the content is just very sub-par compared to American shows. They just don’t have the budget to compete. Is the UK different because it’s English speaking and perhaps it has access to a wider market and thus more capital?

> Can you or someone explain why so many Brits want to watch UK television from abroad?

As an example, Doctor Who sometimes releases new episodes. BBC doesn't just have UK television — they have an "on-demand" offering that actually works, and isn't sparsely populated with 15% of the episodes like some other services (cough Xfinity cough).

Interesting. I'm British and I enjoy quite a lot of French TV: Engrenages (Spiral), Le Bureau des Légendes (The Bureau), Au service de la France (A Very Secret Service), etc.

for me it was for watching live BBC News (BBC World News didn't cut it), and a few weekly quizcoms. plus a couple of kids' channels. there is a vast difference between UK- and American-centric channels which didn't appeal

The BBC has some extremely good content... nature documentaries (David Attenborough), science shows (Horizon), archaeological/history (Digging for Britain), comedy (Ghosts), comedy/news/current affairs (Have I Got News For You). The US does big budget shows very well, but for a wide variety of content I really miss the BBC when I can't access it. I'm obviously biased though.