Can You Watch Britbox from Ireland

I posted a quick video the other day in response to someone asking how to watch Britbox from Australia.  If you don’t know Britbox is the re-released streaming service from the UK’s two biggest TV stations – BBC and ITV.  There are strong indications that they will be joined shortly by the third biggest Channel 4 in the Summer but who knows in these turbulent times.

So is Britbox any good? I’m guessing from what I’ve seen that it will split viewers down the middle.  I suspect many will think it’s a fairly pointless competitor to the likes of Amazon Prime and Netflix, but others will think it’s absolutely wonderful.   Why is opinion likely to be divided?  Well it’s almost certainly because for anyone under 30 there’s almost nothing attractive on it to watch with a few possible exceptions like all the episodes of Dr Who.  However for older viewers, it’s absolutely packed full of wonderful programmes from over the last few decades.

Here’s a quick summary of some of the best programmes available on Britbox –

There are literally hundreds of episodes of programmes just like this. For example we’ve just enjoyed three full series of a detective drama called Broadchurch which is wonderful – don’t believe me though it’s got a 8.4 rating on IMDB here and hundreds of great reviews.  This is typical of the sort of show that’s on Britbox, you might not have heard of it but it’s packed full of world class dramas and shows.  Many older viewers will embrace these especially when they spot some of their cherished favorites from years gone by.

So who can watch Britbox?  Where is it available?  Currently the streaming service is only available in three locations – USA, Canada and the United Kingdom.  These are probably not their ideal markets in my opinion.  Firstly UK viewers already have access to many of these shows on the BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub sites which are free of charge (although you should have a TV license).  British TV is of course very popular in the US and Canada but they are both hugely competitive streaming markets with lots of alternatives.

For those of us who are not in these areas who are desperate to access Britbox here’s a quick guide on how it’s possible.

How to Watch Britbox Anywhere

The country restrictions are commonly known as geo-blocking and are becoming more and more prevalent on the internet. They are imposed for all sorts of reasons economic, political or ideological however for TV and media sites the reason is normally due to copyright and broadcasting rights. What happens is basically dependent on where your IP is registered to. In the case of Britbox, if you try and access their site and your IP is not registered to either the US, Canada or the UK you’ll get blocked.

Fortunately this technology although very common (and becoming much more!) is fairly easy to bypass with the right resources. All you  need to do is have the ability to hide your actual location and present a different IP address.  For anyone who wants to watch Britbox regularly then that means changing your location to the UK, US or Canada before you watch.

In the following video we show how an Australian resident who loves British TV can watch Britbox irrespective of their location.

That’s all there is to it, if you pick a decent VPN like NordVPN which has enough fast servers to change your location at will. You can effectively ignore all these country blocks as long as you know which country you need to select to bypass them.  So as in the video, a resident of Australia can change their’s to a UK or US IP address temporarily while they watch Britbox and then switch back after or change to another address if required. It’s incredibly simple however for Britbox there is one complication which VPN companies don’t always mention when they’re promoting these kind of options.

BritBox Checks Your Payment Location Too

Which is actually much harder to bypass than the IP address block. Basically when you subscribe to Britbox it checks that your payment method – credit, debit card etc originates from the country you’re stating to be in. So for the UK version of Britbox it will check that your card is linked to a UK bank. This might be quite straightforward if you’re travelling or on holiday but for an Australian to get a UK bank account is not actually that straight forward.

There are workarounds, for instance in the US there’s lots of pre-paid debit and credit cards, there are now virtual cards which you can get online too. It’s another layer of complexity though and definitely takes more effort than just clicking a button on your $3 dollar VPN service!

You can always share the account which allows up to six concurrent connections at the moment if you have someone to create the account and set up payment.  However for many without friends and relatives in the specific countries then it’s not really an option.  Remember though there’s no payment needed for the BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub and your UK VPN connection will allow you full access to all these sites plus any other UK TV channel you like.