I’m an expat & currently watch BBC I-player on my work laptop using Expat Shield (which is quite excellent).

My employer is about to change my laptop & I’ll lose expat shield (as my admin rights are being retracted); hence I’m thinking to get a tablet or iPad to be able to continue to watch TV when travelling.

Does anyone know of a similar product (free or purchased) for Android Tablet or iPad?

I use UKiVPN on my iPad for iPlayer etc, works a treat, easy to set up. I think I pay ~£50/year ish.

Cheers, Rich

aha – thanks Rich

that looks pretty promising.
It mentions on the website available for both android tablet & iPad so that’s even better.

Marge, I’m interested in your experiences with Expat Shield? Sounds like you were quite happy with it. I moved out to the Netherlands earlier in the year and I’m missing my UK tv! We get BBC1 & BBC2 with our tv package, but nothing else. We can’t access BBC iplayer, ITV or C4’s online on demand stuff as it realises we’re outside the UK. Am I right in thinking Expat Shield bypasses this? Any downsides to it? I’ll just be running it through my laptop or PC.

Bearded Dave,

As an expat in NL ( Den Haag ) Expatshield works well enough on the PC, but only on the PC.

Another option you have is to get Freesat – which is of course completely free apart from buying the receiver and getting a dish fitted. A 60cm dish should get you a good signal anywhere in NL.

Hi Cranberry. We actually planned to visit a satellite dealer this coming weekend, to check out the costs for Freesat – it was just coincidance that I spotted this topic on here. Have you got Freesat then? Do you know how much, roughly, the subscription/set up cost was?

Expat Shield sounds like a decent option for accessing online content as well, as I usually end up missing the stuff I want to see, as I like sleep too much!

Set up cost me a Humax Foxsat HDR, a dish and some beers for a friend to fit one to the other, so prob £ 300 all in ( which compares nicely to paying Ziggo €40 a month ) when you consider…

Freesat Subscription = £0.00 per month

That doesn’t sounds too unreasonable. £300 was around about the figure I had in my head. Hadn’t really considered that Freesat was actually free. Stupid really, as the clue was in the name! 😳

I use Witopia personal

$50 [so about £35/year], very fast and stable
I have one VPN tunnel set up for a London server and another for New York which covers me usually for what I want but if not, they have plenty of other dotted around
https://www.witopia.net/?faq-item=ipsec-gateway-locations

Expat shield works well enough to watch the iPlayer stuff OK. The adverts can be a bit annoying but it’s free so can’t complain…

What channels have you got on freesat Cranberry?
generally I am pretty content with Flemish TV when I am at home but I travel a lot, and then the downloads from iPlayer are marvellous 🙂

(ps How is the Dutch coming along both?)

Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands! I’ve been doing night classes, once a week for 2.5 hours, since September. Funnily enough, I’m actually learning just over the border, in Belgium. Tough old language to learn, but I’m getting the basics! It does help that my girlfriend is Dutch though!

With Expat Shield, do the adverts pop up constantly, while you’re using it? My laptop isn’t the fastest, so just wondering if the ads are going to slow it down too much to make it worthwhile.

Adverts do pop-up but it’s not too intrusive. If you are just downloading to watch later it’s not an issue of course.

(I did about 3 dutch lessons when I first moved but hated it as the majority of students were forced to be there due to immigration rules & had no desire or intention to learn it. Fortunately that was some time ago. Only problem I now have is teaching the kids English)

My first few lessons were a little unnerving, as I’m the only native English speaker in my class of around 20 people. Most are Polish or French speaking Belgians, but we also have two Thai girls, a Spaniard, a Columbian, an Italian and a few Bosnians! I might be learning Dutch, but not sure I’m going to be speaking it in Dutch accent! Once I got past the initial nervousness, I actually started enjoying it. Most people seem pretty keen to be there and I’m not under any real pressure to learn, as we intend on moving back to the UK, probably next summer. I just thought it was a good opportunity to have a go at it, as the best way to learn a language seem to be to live where they speak it, so I hear it and see it every day, whether I want to or not!

There’s a list of Freesat channels here:

clicky

My Dutch is passible, sort of. Working/socialising and watching TV in English isn’t the best way to get learning Dutch.

Bit Torrent 🙂 if your going to cheap the system at least do it for free 🙂