There are quite a few ex-pat Brits on this forum. Does anyone know if ex-pats can purchase a UK TV licence even if their home address is not in the UK ? Thanks in advance.
Pretty certain you can't. Even if you did have one, regional restrictions would still be in place, and as you have to watch either stuff like BBC America, or online, I'm not sure why you'd want to pay for a license.
Not sure what you're trying to do, but having a UK tv license will not give you access to programs. When I am away even radio Humberside doesn't work. Think you need a virtual IP address, someone smarter than me about those things will be along shortly.
It's worse than that. I'm a license payer but am stopped from listening to RH during games because I'm not in actual radio reception area.
What you mean is using a VPN to connect to a UK based network, so that the OP gets a UK registered IP address. This then fools the content provider into thinking you are in the UK and allows access.
Correct. I have been using a VPN for 7 or 8 years now to watch live BBC channels on IPlayer. The quality is as good as watching in my sister's living room in Hull. In fact, except for live football matches, it's all I ever watch. As 'x' above says, soon the BBC will require all users of iPlayer to log-in so they can validate you have a TV licence. I would willingly pay for that. My thought is to get a licence under my name, using my sister's address as my "home address", which should work, but it would be cleaner if the authorities would let me use my Canadian address. I just wondered if any non-UK resident ex-pat had tried such an approach.
This is do with broadcast rights which stop live commentaries being broadcast via the internet. It doesn't matter where you are. Viewing BBC iPlayer is a different issue. Using a UK proxy and ticking the "I have a licence" box works right now, but soon they'll probably want the licence number.
Use a vpn and your sister's licence number and address, and pay half her licence fee. Edit our posts are crossing
The thought had crossed my mind, but my sister would see that as breaking the regulations/law. I'd go through one of my nephews in Hull to circumvent that issue
Is that really going to happen? I wonder how it will work...I mean I just pay mine as a direct debit so I've no ideas what the number is, and surely you wouldn't have to log in with it every time? I imagined this would be more about enabling them to prosecute someone when they caught them rather than putting a login system in place (although I could be spectacularly wrong)
All these mention of licenses. Do we have a lot of Americans on here or do the posters' Autocorrects correct to Americanisms?
Which has nothing to do with the BBC. In the US, where they have local TV stations, you can watch every Gridiron football game live except the one played in your area. Which is why their average attendances are the highest of any league in the world.
The BBC should make iPlayer a subscription-based service and roll it out worldwide - that way, they would generate more money and we would no longer have to pay a licence fee in the UK. The only thing (albeit an administratively humungous thing) stopping this are contracts of the actors/directors/musicians involved in their productions.