Who doesn't love to watch TV? It's a Friday night, the weekend is just around the corner, and you're looking for a good way to relax and wind down that doesn't necessarily involve you getting drunk watching football. So, you get onto your favourite browser, head to your favourite website, and attempt to watch your favourite TV shows, and suddenly, you get this message: "This content is not available in your geographic region".
Now, before I continue (actually, before I continue on this continue, if you are not seeing this issue, then you can stop reading this post NOW), let me say first that I presume most of you do not watch TV on an actual TV in your room, and while that actually is possible here at Cambridge, you are then required by law to purchase a TV license (Cambridge actually has a third-party company check that people who need to have a license actually have one). So, as long as you are not watching streamed content "live" for the most part, you should not need one and can enjoy your content in peace, well at least as soon as you can figure out how to get around that unavailiability message.
So what's the issue here? Well, websites can detect based on your computer's address from which country you are sending the request to watch whatever content you want to watch. Unfortunately, sometimes that content's copyright does not extend into the UK. CBS is one good example of that, so what this mean? Are you doomed to a year without television? Obviously, you are not, and there exist numerous ways to get around this issue.
The heart of the issue is that your computer is sending its request from the "wrong" country (by which I mean from a country where you cannot watch your content), so you need to somehow get your request to be sent from the "right" country, like the US. There exist many services out there that can allow you to do this, and while I cannot cover all of them in this post, I will share with you two that I have found to be effective after much searching on the internet.
1) Stealthy
Created during the Arab Spring to facilitate information dissemination, this plugin is a general, all-purpose plugin that allows you to have your requests sent as if you are in a different country by sending it through their proxy servers around the world that then handle your request to provide the content you are looking for. The plugin does offer you the chance to purchase the ability to have your requests sent solely as if you are from the US for example, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. They claim that under the "free" version, they may not always have servers that can send requests as if you are from the desired country, but I've generally not found that to be the case.
This plugin worked quite well for me at the start of the school year, but after the Christmas vacation, the plugin began falter more and more often. When you use the plugin, it sometimes has issues sending your request, and even if it is successful, it may improperly render the requested content on your browser. However, with a little patience, you would eventually get through. Unfortunately, that patience was no longer rewarded, and that observation was further corroborated by reviews I read afterwards, forcing me to switch plugins. While it may no longer work for me at this point, for any of you readers, it may become a suitable option again down the road, so I would still check it out.
2) ProxMate
This plugin is specifically targeted for TV shows and other streaming websites like Netflix, and you can even configure your "Netflix country" for example, which is good if you are looking for specific content on such a website. I've been using it for the past several weeks, and I have encountered zero issues using it. The only downside as far as I can tell is that this plugin is not free, and you can only trial it for about two weeks after providing an email address. Once the two weeks are up, you have to pay. The subscription is relatively cheap actually, but if you're like me and really don't want to pay at all, I trust that you readers can figure out ways to "extend the trial" so to speak given the specifications.
I should note that these two plugins exist only on Firefox and Chrome, so if you are on another browser, these will not be available to you! However, in any case, I encourage you for your own entertainment sake to do some research into plugins and services like these to properly evaluate which ones will work best for you once you are in the UK, as the functionality and terms/conditions of these services can change from year to year. In fact, ProxMate for example used to be free until late 2015, so you can see why it is important to do your homework and not blindly install another plugin.