Watching TV abroad on Ipad

Another vote for the FilmOn app for Ipads.
With 120 channels out of which 13 are UK TV stations, plus BBC news you should be able to find something worth watching.
Worked fine for me when we were on a touring holiday in India. We were using the hotel's wifi connection so I'm not sure how it would be on 3G.
 
I have already discovered our 3G is better than the pitiful WiFi in the Marina so am relaxed we have the capacity to receive the programme

Watching tv or streaming video of any sort, uses a lot of bandwidth, so unless you have a 3G data plan with unlimited data, check you actually have enough monthly allowance to watch tv , and that you don't incur huge costs for going over your monthly allowance.
 
How reliable is the VPN using 3g? I use a VPN for work when remote from the office, and it regularly drops out, worse when using my phone card. I could imagine this being really frustrating if trying to view something.

is your problem the 3g part, or your it department just specced a dodgy vpn headend? i just dropped my vpn after 57hours online over 3g, including a bit of video streaming and voice conferencing.
 
is your problem the 3g part, or your it department just specced a dodgy vpn headend? i just dropped my vpn after 57hours online over 3g, including a bit of video streaming and voice conferencing.

I don't think the VPN is dodgy, but it does seem to require a reasonable bandwidth to operate reliably.
 
Both my wife and i spend far to much time abroad with work. We have a subsription with witopia.net. This vpn for the ipad is simple to install

The ip addresss is then in the uk (or usa if you specify)

Because we then have a uk adresss, iplayer nd itv player etc work just fine abroad (alledgedly)

There are cheaper workrounds, but witopia for ipad seems to be the most robust. You can have three devices on one subscription

If you have a laptop (pc) then I have heard ;) expatshield works well for free, but you do get a lot of adverts

Enjoy
 
How reliable is the VPN using 3g? I use a VPN for work when remote from the office, and it regularly drops out, worse when using my phone card. I could imagine this being really frustrating if trying to view something.

I've not needed to use the VPN for streaming - only for remote support - the dropout for us is related to the use (or lack of in a given time) and signal strength on the device (iPhone) ... this is running through business ADSL and low grade end units.

Viewing video over VPN can be a little difficult if the viewer isn't caching the data very well or the speed of the link isn't fast enough - and its the slowest part of the link that is the issue. In my case, using work VPN would mean that the fastest connection I could achieve would be the 1Mb upload available from our ADSL - and that assumes the rest of the links are faster ... it should be enough to stream video (just) but there is often a delay due to other users on the line.
 
I've used it all over the world but be careful with data costs on 3G. It cost me £35 just to watch a penalty shoot out once!
That would be my concern too. My 3G data limit is 5Gb per month and I use most of that just e-mailing and doing a bit of net surfing in 2-3 wks on the boat. I can imagine that a few hours TV would put me over my limit v quickly and that could be costly. Anyone know how many Mb an hour's worth of TV uses?
 
I think Deleted User its 1gb / hr

I am not a geek on this stuff but when I watch TV through a dongle that seems to be the amount built up on the time/mb used recorder for that particular month.

I think iphones use less as do ipads as sceens smaller or something like that


I would not 3G TV overseas before checking the cost as because as you say I have have some big bills with biz data files / attachments over the years
 
a) web-based iplayer works fine on the ipad, it doesn't serve flash-based video to idevices.
b) additionally there is an iplayer app
c) futhermore vpn's work on the ipad, so you can use a uk vpn service to get access to iplayer if you wish.
d) finally there is a a global iplayer app which gives access for a monthly fee.

could you have been more wrong?

iplayer,....ipad.......iplayer app.......vpn,s.......wos all that then?
 
If the wifi is still as bad as it was on our last visit, I will know next week as we are off on Friday :D
Rob

I'm in SC right now Rob
And the WiFi is certainly not capable of handling TV at the moment.
The marina have all the AP's open at the moment so every Tom Dick and Harry is using it.

I gave the TV thing a full review recently and I've decided to stick with Satellite reception.

Maybe when 4G or a good WiMAX service comes along.

Mike
 
Not sure if you mean we are surrounded by boat owners who are fat , have no teeth and shout at each other or admire the scenery ? :eek:
Now mike has put my mind at rest that the boss can't watch uk television without breaking the bank , we will just have to sit on the fly bridge , sipping wine, planning which tapas to eat tonight, hoisting the Bimini to keep out of the remorseless sun and chatting with friends.
It is a tough life :o
Regards
Rob
 
I tried that Filmon for a while but it ran out as a free trial after a while and wants 15e a month, the cheapest one i could find i did a trial of and channel 4 on demand didnt work. just done a trial of this one http://www.laptoptelly.com/freetrial works ok for channel 4 aswell. still wouldnt mind a free solution that does run out though.
 
You are best off with the VPN route I found, reason being that it gives access to all of the networks from all countries without any aggravation. Just means paying a few bucks a month for the privilege. Watchiplayer.com works OK for iPlayer, ITV Player & The US Hulu.

http://www.watchiplayer.com
 
I'm in SC right now Rob
And the WiFi is certainly not capable of handling TV at the moment.
The marina have all the AP's open at the moment so every Tom Dick and Harry is using it.

I gave the TV thing a full review recently and I've decided to stick with Satellite reception.

Maybe when 4G or a good WiMAX service comes along.

Mike


If you buy a freesat box with built in wireless connection or bluetooth, then you can watch tv on your iPad no download limits......
 
Rusty,

You then need a 5-6k auto tracking sat dome on the boat to get the freesat signal that allegedly will not reach very far down Spain soon.

I've got a lidl freesat and dish (£80) on the boat, works perfectly 99% of the time, except when the tour boats goes past there's a massive wake which upsets the reception for a couple of seconds.
the smaller dish is less sensitive to direction than the big version, maybe that could be a problem in Spain?
 
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