We are living at a time when the way people watch TV and get their entertainment has been completely revolutionized. Gone are the days when you had to be in front of your television set at home for you to catch up with your favorite shows. Also gone are the days when if you missed a particular show or program, you had to wait for a replay at a time and date set by the broadcaster.
With live streaming services, you can simply watch your favorite shows on the go, and should you miss any, replays may be available after just a couple of hours or within days. As such, there is a lot of flexibility and versatility on how we get entertained.
But amidst all the conveniences, challenges still exist when it comes to accessing certain TV content from certain locations. For example, there are lots of international media houses whose content you can access globally, and there are also certain programs and shows which you can’t access from certain locations. It means that if you are traveling abroad, you may be unable to catch up with your favorite shows until you come back home.
However, it is still possible to keep up with your local shows while abroad. If you have been missing your favorite shows because you can’t access them when abroad, we are going to reveal to you how you can easily avoid that so that you never miss a show simply because you are out of the country.
Why you can’t watch live streaming news when abroad
The major reason why you may not be able to watch live streaming news and any other local program when abroad is due to geo-blocking. Geo-blocking is a technique used by companies and businesses to block their content from being accessed from certain geographic locations. For example, if an American television station doesn’t want their content to be viewed in Asia or Australia, they can simply geo-block their content to only the places they wish their content to be accessed and then exclude Asia or Australia where they don’t want people to access their content.
How geo-blocking works
There are various ways through which content creators can lock their content to given geographic locations, but the major one is through the use of IP address. Whenever you access the internet, you have an IP address that is unique to the geographic location from where you are browsing. To geo-block, the media companies simply block the IP addresses in the geographic locations where they don’t want their content to be viewed. Once they do that, every time you attempt to access the content, you may be redirected to another page or you could get a notice telling you that the content you are trying to view is not accessible from your location. So then, how do you watch content abroad when the IP addresses are geo-blocked? There is a way. Find out below.
How to live stream on blocked IP addresses
To bypass blocked IP addresses so that you watch local channels abroad, all you have to do is find a way of accessing the content on an IP address from that location that is not geo-blocked by the content provider – use an IP address that resembles the ones in the allowed geographic locations. Well, don’t think that you will have to be a computer genius to achieve – all you need is a VPN to do this.
A VPN stands for a virtual private network. It allows you to browse safely and anonymously without revealing your exact location. As such, the content providers who content you want to live stream will not be in a position to tell your exact geographic location and so you will have access to the content.
Additionally, with a reliable VPN service, you can always set your browsing location as your home country so that you browse on an IP address similar to the ones in your home country. With such, you will be able to access any geo-locked content irrespective of your location when abroad. You can use virtual private networks on your pc or smart devices and use it browse anonymously without ever giving out your location.
While you think about using a VPN in order to watch news live stream when traveling abroad, you should know some of the downfalls you may encounter. The greatest one is IP leaks. This means that with some VPN services, you may not get absolute masking of your IP address, and leaks may happen which may make you blocked once again from the streaming sites. There are many free VPN services, but they are not as reliable if you want complete anonymity when browsing online. If you want a good experience, it is highly advisable that you get a paid VPN Service.
Secondly, internet speeds abroad vary a lot. When you use a virtual private network to hide your location, the speeds may be compromised further, and this may cause an unpleasant experience for your live streaming. For example, due to the reduced speeds, you may find that content takes long to load due to buffering. This may not make you enjoy your live streams because it will keep on getting interrupted every now and then.
Watch live streaming news on third party websites
Apart from subscribing for a VPN service to watch live streaming news when traveling abroad, you can also use third-party streaming sites which, in most cases, are never geo-blocked. With such sites, it will be easy to access content from geo-locked carriers and watch them just as you would have watched them when back at home.
However, you should be cautious when using such third party streaming sites. Most of them carry the content illegally, and they can be potentially dangerous to your devices as well as your personal online safety. Some of those sites may be laced with dangerous codes that might install spyware or malware onto your computer and the effects of such may be deadly. The streams will also have lots of ads which will make it less pleasurable to enjoy the content.
