Watching Aunty's iplayer with Nord VPN - what a faff

Technology
1

I recently took out a month sunscription to Nord VPN to see if it enabled my viewing of mainly BBC tv.
So far I’ve only watch iPlayer content and it’s not been plain sailing. I get frequent buffering. This evening we watched an episode of a world food travelogue. It buffered so I changed sever a couple of times. Still buffering so changed to Edinburgh and then it was ok. Sometimes changing episode has an effect. Is that what must be expected or are others getting better results. By the way we have fibre into the house and use mains modems to cross the house to where we have the tv. Sometimes the iPlayer gives up and displays an error code. Not looked it up yet.

2

I’m in the 12th with fibre and Nord get no buffering at all watching BBC. No buffering when I use it stream content in the USA as well. Have tried to a tracert from your PC to see where the lag might be coming from

3

I’ve been using Surfshark for a few years now and not had any issues.

I also used get_iplayer to download stuff to watch locally

4

I’ve used NordVPN for three of four years and just signed up for another three (or maybe four :thinking:, their deals are convoluted) and never had buffering problems I could attribute to them. The BBC does try and identify VPN IPs but one just has to change server or location every now and then.

5

We suffered buffering on a tv watching iplayer, did some phoning of the tech department and they suggested we had an old version of iplayer software on the tv so we deleted the app then did a fresh install which cured it.

1 Like
6

Was this in France while watching via a VPN :rofl:

7

I have to admit it was in the UK.

8

We get buffering, but tend to download anything we want to watch to avoid that problem.

1 Like
9

Good idea

10

No buffering here either.

11

We installed the Nord VPN client on our Apple TV and very rarely get any buffering. Very occasionally, we change the server because it gets detected by one of the channels but that’s it. All U.K. catch-up and live streams work fine - even via our Starlink satellite service.

12

Whether you get buffering can depend upon the device or even the software used on a device rather than the VPN. I use NordVPN on a router. With my STB iPlayer I get regular buffering and sometimes complete failure to play. On my tablet it is rock solid every time. On my PC via Chrome browser it sometimes buffers and sometimes fails to play. With Brave browser it’s rock solid. It’s the same VPN connection every time via 5GHz WiFi.

2 Likes
13

I have Nord and have to switch it off to send and receive emails. It tells me that the email addresses don’t exist and refuses to send them.

14

In the NordVPN settings you can exclude your mail app from using the VPN so that it connects directly.

3 Likes
15

I installed it on our Android smart TV but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Can’t get iPlayer.

16

When you say you can’t get iPlayer do your mean you can’t get the app or the app won’t let you watch its content?

17

Yes, sorry. I can get iPlayer but although I set the VPN to UK it can still tell I’m in France

18

Make sure you clear cookies after switching to the VPN.

19

Can you do that on a TV?

I still have a dumb TV so sorry if this is a dumb question.

Edit: just googled it and indeed you can… Dunno why I thought you might not be able to.

20

Yes, clear cache in app as suggested. Next question is can you get others channels that are geolocated to UK such as itv channels 4 & 5 ?