Yes, I’ve seen mention of VPN but not being very techy minded I dont like to think I might upset our current provider set up. I have just had a look at a VPN called cyberghost and for a 3 year contract after a 45 day free trial it works out at 2 euros a month which sounds very attractive.
I suppose I shouldn’t worry how VPN’s work but I do! I have read that if for example I access BBC iplayer via a tagged on VPN and it is detected then I get blocked from iplayer access so what would be the use of the VPN I had on a 3 year contract? Sorry if the question sounds dumb but me and technology are worlds apart.
Another thought, we are currently with orange who I am happy with and of course we are on an Orange VPN to which all our set up feeds through. If all suddenly passed via a different VPN Would it upset things like Amazon.fr prime tv that we have and took me a while to set up on our Smart tv as a non techy!!
I would really like to give VPN a go but wouldn’t want to mess things up.
I jump between different VPNs depending on what I am watching as the same one does not work for all providers.
I use PureVPN and can watch BBC, Sky, and even cricket from India!
It has always been the case that you had to have a VPN to watch the iplayer and ITV over the Internet …on demand …streaming, its to do with copyright for oversees and not Brexit. I was told by guy who supplied our VPN is that uk broadcasters have either bought the broadcast right for only for uk. (Original content makers terms) or if they have made the prog in UK then they want to sell it round the world. So if people can stream it means that the commercial value of progs are greatly reduced. So UK transmitters are programmed to detect none uk based ISP.
You can pay and get Sky and do down load …but its not of course like streaming Ondemand.
Interesting that I have freesat and I can get BBC and ITV on demand.
We use libertyshield, and can select from a range so always one that works. Our wifi is not strong enough to use it on the actual supposedly smart TV, and the internet itself is rarely strong enough to stream anything, but we download stuff and just plug laptop into TV to watch.
We are orange otherwise.
We get all the UK channels live via freesat, but don’t know how to get any channel on demand (John ??)
Mat are you still getting sky go on purevpn, it has been problematic on Android phone since yesterday, anyone else having problems as it is ok on the pc.
Virgin, BBC, Sky, and Itv all tried blocking yesterday.
On ipad it is working.
It will be interesting to see if it does after an update, program updated on Android yesterday and been proplematic since the update.
This is from www.europeandatajournalism.eu, 17/07/2019 -
EU member states are governed by a directive which only allows a VAT reduction down to a minimum of 5% on sanitary products. Most countries have decided to reduce this VAT in recent years, albeit in line with the EU’s minimum rate. Among these countries are Spain, Greece and Austria, with a tax of 10% or greater on sanitary products. Also in this group are France, with a 5.5% tax, the UK, with 5%, and Ireland with 0%. This country constitutes an exception: Ireland’s tampon tax rate was applied before implementation of the Europe-wide legislation for the reduction and exemptions of VAT, hence the 5% minimum is not applicable there.
In the UK, the inability to further reduce the tax on sanitary products has only been an issue since 2015. That year, the British parliament debated whether to apply a 0% rate to such products. The motion was unsuccessful due to the community directive countering it, an argument which was used in favour of Brexit. As an alternative, the UK parliament decided to allocate part of the tax collected through this Tampon Tax to women’s support groups. In total, £12m was granted to 70 organizations in 2017. Controversy was stoked, however, when it was reported that one of the NGOs was an anti-abortion group. Scotland, meanwhile, has decided to provide free sanitary towels and tampons to all female students at schools, colleges and universities. This program, whose aim is to fight period poverty, has an allocated budget of £5.2m.
The European Commission announced at the start of the year that it intended to amend the EU law to provide more freedom for member states in the matter of changing the VAT applied to certain products, although no date has been proposed for implementation of this. The UK is set to make removal of the Tampon Tax a reality, whether within or outside of the EU.
Interesting that I have freesat and I can get BBC and ITV on demand.
…But not channel 4, they fell out with Freesat over royalties
Yes I joined the groups campaigning on this many years back…
I’m finding this discussion on UK television more confusing than enlightening. We seem to have:
- People (like me) that receive Freesat but can’t connect to BBC or ITV on demand without a VPN…
- People that were getting some or all of these before December 31st but now can’t…
- People that still get all of those, but not Channel 4…
- Etc…
What’s going on? What’s the explanation for all these differences @graham ?
The freesat box connects to our Internet…we have good speeds on the coast in Cotes d’Armor… and then navigate to Ondemand and up comes iplayer and ITV Hub…no Channel4 they fell out with Freesat 18 months ago. So if your links are slow and flakey that’s maybe why freesat won’t give you ondemand.
Not possible to down load in this mode just to watch ondemand progs
Ours is a Freesat recorder box so to watch later (this is in our verandah) I just set it to record.
We have basic Sky package in the lounge which also gives on demand using same VPN but on another sat dish and also via loft arial for free to air French programmes.
If we use Orange isp we lose ondemand but can do it via O2 European mobile data hot spot but it soon chews through the data allowance 12gb(£10 a month) but I’m cancelling this as it was only ever a back up in case my internet went down
But actually we don’t watch that much TV…just like to be able to watch what we want when we want…not a box set watcher so no Netflix et al
Think it all costs (including orange landlines) about €1.50 a day quite a bit less than a coffee in our PMU so not expensive!
Just checked my set up …see my recent post and all working as before…hope I’m not speaking too soon.!!
However Brexit should have no effect on this unless regulators/ providers change their views in coming weeks, same with mobile roaming charges.
And…
5. People who only have french tv and don’t know what you’re all going on about! 
No idea @Geof_Cox
The VPN thing is well known and understood; if the provider gets wind of people utilising their service through what they regard as an unacceptable route, they will do all they can to close the door on it.
The wider internet has the ability to reference the location of its usage through its IP address assigned to different parts of the globe and this can be ‘masked’ by using a VPN which tricks the systems in to believing it is somewhere else. In some cases, that can be durably obscured but often the ‘free’ or low cost options are quickly found out and defeated.
It’s less easy to do this with satellite as @anon88169868 alluded to when he suggested that sending spanners up by rocket would be difficult but, like most things technical, closing down feeds is always possible but might impinge on users who have bought in to the right to view and would be mightily peeved.
I’ve not taken too much personal interest in the subject to be honest since my viewing habits favour French emissions these days anyway and leave this to others to be concerned about. If they turned off the Astra 2 satellite tomorrow, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
Abandoned to my confusion!
I don’t really miss much of uk products etc as French/EU products are as good and sometimes better than UK, some are more expensive ( building &DIY) and some cheaper.
But I would really miss uk TV, my French is not up to following it in a relaxed way…but the content (too many films and quiz shows) and breadth of it leave me cold ! Maybe its a cultural thing but I think its poor.
Depends on what you watch as well as your viewing preferences so difficult to comment.
As an example, yesterday (despite it being on the BBC) we watched comme d’habitude, the New Years Concert on France2 and stayed on that channel right through till early evening when we switched to listening to the radio. Today (Saturday) started of as usual with CNEWS till 11am then over to France5 with its rich mix of wildlife programs and architecture.
All the time, subliminally, there is French being spoken in the background even when not watching directly and that has to be good for learning.
Whilst watching CNEWS and TeleMatin (most weekdays from about 8am) I see a word or expression I don’t immediately comprehend so look it up an Google translate which serves two purposes… it improves my spelling of French words and educates me on the way of the world seen through French eyes.
I suppose you could say I’m a sad case… instead of counting sheep to get to sleep the other night, I was spelling out the French numbers 
