Watching BBC iPlayer Outside the UK – Now Using Google Chrome
Following up from my earlier post, where I described how you could watch BBC iPlayer (or any geo-restricted content for that matter) from outside the UK. The process involved using Firefox and a plugin called FoxyProxy.
Since then, I have taken a liking to Google Chrome as my web browser, because it is so much faster than anything else out there. However, until recently, it didn’t have extensions, the very function which allows you to use FoxyProxy on Firefox.
Now that’s all changed however and Chrome has opened up its doors to extensions.
It took a bit of searching and configuring, but I’ve now found the perfect solution for getting BBC iPlayer up and running on Google Chrome, from outside the UK.
In order to do this, follow the first four steps on my earlier blog post, which will lay the foundations for being able to use the Tor network to circumvent geo-restrictions.
Then we need to tailor it for use with Chrome. In order to do this, ensure you have the latest version of Chrome running on your machine. Once you do, install the Switchy extension.
After this, you need to configure Switchy. Do this by going to your Extensions page (select Extensions from the Tools menu in the top right hand corner of your window).
Once you select Options for Switchy, you will see the following window.
Now, create a new profile and perform the following steps:
1. Label the Profile “BBC” or similar
2. Uncheck the “Use same proxy server for all protocols” box.
3. Delete the contents of all remaining boxes, except the Profile name.
4. Under Manual Configuration, type 127.0.0.1 by SOCKS proxy and enter port 9050.
5. Save it. Now whenever you head over to iPlayer, just ensure you start up Vidalia (Tor) first and then switch your proxy profile over to BBC, using the icon shown below. Now everything should be filtered through Tor and you’ll be able to watch the iPlayer as if you were in the UK.
Bear in mind that you will want to remove your proxy connection when surfing other websites. The developer of Switchy has said that a future release of the extension will include URL patterns, meaning that as soon as you visit a BBC website, it will use the BBC profile and other websites will use your standard internet connection.
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