Many of you may have tried to use iPlayer or Hulu abroad while on holiday, travelling or on assignment in a foreign country. You will of course have found that it does not work.

It is however actually possible to watch iPlayer/Hulu abroad, in fact it is surprisingly easy, you will find all the best solutions here.

It should be noted that BBC iPlayer is funded by the UK TV license, if you don't pay for a TV license then you legally have no right to watch iPlayer outside UK. The information here is offered for expats and UK travellers who have a TV license in the UK.

Hulu provides content directly from the network’s so the content is copyright protected and for legal reasons they have restricted its access around the globe, if a Family Guys Episodes is aired on Tv in USA it should only be accessible to the internet users from USA. They check this via our IP address.

How Do They Know I Am Abroad 

It is quite easy really, every device connected to the internet has a unique number, normally given to it by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), this number is called you IP address.

Wikipedia defines an IP address as "An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a numerical identification and logical address that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network"

Each country has a set of IP addresses, thus once they know your IP address all they need do is check this against the country database and they know where you are. Thus you computer connected in Germany has a German IP and this is why you cant watch iPlayer outside UK. The exception that proves the rule however would, as always be AOL, who have a slightly different system to most ISPs and as such it is possible to be a user in France and have a UK IP address.

To watch iPlayer outside UK or Hulu outside US you just need to make it look like you are NOT outside the UK/US, effectively you need to do what AOL is doing to those users in France.

VPNs

The end result is that it 'appears' as though your Internet connection is in the country where the VPN ends is located