Some tv stations, like the BBC in Britain, will provide their fellow countrymen with an opportunity to watch the football world cup 2006 in germany live in a streamed version from their webpages. They said on their webpage that “The service will be available to UK broadband users and will mirror terrestrial and interactive coverage.” I assume it is free of charge but maybe my loyal British readers could enlight me how they plan on streaming the content.
They most likely will scan your IP and lookup your country from it. That means people from outside Britain won´t be able to view the matches on the BBC homepage. (or other homepages of other countries, you get my point I hope.) So, it would be impossible for an englishman, who is supporting his team in Germany, to view the live coverage on the BBC pages. As you all know, there are always ways to circumvent country checks, here is the one I suggest.
Last time it was ABC who did not allow their series to be viewed by people from outside the USA and the method that I described back then is still valid for the World Cup (or any other streaming content on the internet).
But this time I want to introduce a faster method which should work most of the time for you. Visit a website like whatismyproxy.com to check on your own IP. Remember this IP, you will come back to this site and check the IP again with a proxy enabled.
Search google using strings like “country proxy list”, “england proxy list” and the like. You will come up with search results like publicproxyservers.com or proxy server list. All show a table with proxies including the country the proxy is hosted. Browse for proxies that are located in the same country as the content provider of the streams.
Copy one of the IPs and remember the port. In Firefox open Tools –> Options. Select Connection Settings and select Manual Proxy Configuration. Add the IP to the HTTP Proxy Row and enter the Port in the field next to it. Click Use this proxy server for all protocols and test it by navigating to the whatismyproxy.com website again.
See if the page loads fast and the IP is different from the one the website displayed earlier when you checked your real IP.
If you see a different IP it means two things. First, the proxy is working (assuming it does not take ages to load pages) and second your are surfing relativly anonymous. The BBC website will check your IP and detect that you are coming from Britain and display their treasures for you. Note that it is still possible to detect your real IP by the means of Java for example.
If you have questions let me know, I´ll be glad to help out. The great advantage of this method is that you can check and use proxies no matter what operating system you are using. A disadvantage is that it could take a while until you find a fast working proxy that is located in the country you need. If you have troubles try charon to verify proxies, the how to is available from my ABC article.
Update:
Take a look at my worldcup preparations article for a working method that involves downloading a software. You will be able to see the matches live with english commentary.
Related Articles:
Firefox Football Worldcup ExtensionNew online proxy.
How To View Blocked Youtube Videos
Select a country for your proxy
Football Results Widget UEFA Informer
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ using the icons below.
Anyone know of a way to set preferences for TVU player? I keep having to wait for it to buffer.
Mac OS X users who are having trouble with other solutions use peercast
http://www.peercast.org/
No joy yet with the Mac…I’m attempting a fix on BootCamp + TVUPlayer, but the going is slow. Just caught hte peercast.org post and will try that now…more to come!
England 1-0 Paraguay: how can that much talent win on nothing more than an own-goal?
Hey Macfan: downloaded peercast…now what? Is there a committed worldcup channel available? A yellowpages search produces no effective results.
Jonathan did you select the low or high speed channel ? If you tried the high one try the low one instead.
Ok…are there ANY mac users who’ve successfully engaged peercast?
any support for gnu/linux?
how is pplive bypassing the bbc blockage?
rufus I tried it myself but it seems for this game the feed is not working… make sure you search “TV”
tux pplive has nothing to do wirh the bbc stream. it´s an alternative to it
Using Mac OSX tried peercast… no results. What next?
The stream is good, excellent match watching from the web ~
semiotics…a little more detail in the future
I am just trying to get a bbc radio commentary for live matches to replace the crap commentary on ESPN and ABC. Any ideas? The instructions above do not seem to work. I think the bbc has some pretty sophisticated filters.
Whats the website for pplive?
OI! Stop stealing from the BBC.
It’s funding by British taxpayers – it’s not free for us – we’ve paid for it. Get your own country to pay for it.
Today I watched England – Paraguay online from here:
www.worldcupwatcher.com
Hope you find it useful!!!
Madison, we’re also stealing from ESPN, not that it matters. BBC, ESPN…no matter the source, when leisure is at stake Americans assiduously display the ideals of democracy.
Write your politicians to end your TV tax. Until then, whine elsewhere.
Ana the website for pplive is.. pplive.com :P
Madison, we are not stealing from tbe BBC. They are broadcasting the show and some people managed to watch it..
I’ll stop stealing your “paid-for-by-Brits” BBC when you stop stealing my paid-for-by-American-taxpayers GPS sat-nav service. Deal? Get your own sat-nav service.
It’s coming soon! It’s called Galileo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_positioning_system
We’re round going in circles here.
Ok for those of you who are happy with pplive and torrent, I’m happy for you – I use them myself.
For the person who can’t find anything on torrent go to mininova.org and search for ‘match of the day’.
For any of you who want to know about torrent or filesharing go to slyck.com.
OK NOW FOR THOSE OF US who want to watch the BBC streaming because it has the highest quality commentary – unlike ESPN – in English, can we please have some advice on getting the BBC streams.
It seems that not only do you need a proxy but that you need a proxy from one of the ISPs that are registered with the BBC.
CAN ANYBODY HELP PLEASE?
Cheers to four-aces getting us back on track!
I’d add this addendum: does anyone know how to get Peercast to work on a Mac? I have the WC 2006 channel, but no audio/video.
Also, sans Peercast, any new *SUCCESSFUL* mac developments? How about getting either Bootcamp or Parallel to function?
Any RELEVANT conversation would be appreciated!
Talaan, you have a deal.
As a matter of fact, I don’t use GPS. I’m happy saving money and using maps/common sense. I presume this means you won’t be stealing from the Beeb then?
Stealing from the BBC blah blah blah. A)who cares b) I’m a Brit in Japan and I’m gagging for some commentary that doesn’t break my eardrums. So I’m not stealing, you can tell me. I’m also on a mac. Has anyone found an IP address that works yet? pretty please?
Are there any live British or Canadian audio only feeds so that I can watch with TV video but British commentary?
I tried downloading that crappy PPLive software that Martin is tauting and the download was so slow I couldn’t stand it –
I haven’t heard ONE successful report of the anonymous/English proxy trick. Has ANYONE managed to get this to work?
At the Half Commentary: USA 0 – 2 Czech Republic
- The only thing worse than the US flagging performance in the first half is the ESPN commentary. Marcelo Balboa sounds like a Rhodes scholar next to Dave “I didn’t watch ‘soccer’ until five months ago” O’Brien.
TVU PLAYER IS THE WAY TO GO. trust me
Drewl TVUplayer is more stable, fast download. Try this, it should be working fine
FULL TIME: USA 0 – 3 Czech Republic
A lethargic showing in this game. DeMarcus Beasley looked hesitant and out-of-step, playing the ball backwards almost 4-1 on his touches. Substititues O’Brien and Johnson sparked a more organized 2nd half attack, setting up two good scoring chances with Johnson narrowly missing from 22 yrds out. Both should hold down starting roles in the next match, with DeBeasley, Pablo Mastroeni or Bobby Convey deservedly relegated to the bench.
While the U.S. should feel lucky to “escape” down only three goals, that goal differential will haunt them at the end of group play. Indeed, this terrible performance by the U.S. national team was made watchable only by the near-flawless play of the Czech squad.
Still waiting on a usable Mac suggestion, or anyone who’s gotten past the BBC screener using the proxy IP trick.