Luddite question – Firestick work abroad?

Bit of a luddite question…. going to France for a week next week, can we take Amazon Firestick and use in the telly box there to watch para-olympics (have a friend competing and don’t want to miss it..) and the Vuelta?

I guess it will know that we are abroad and not work, and we need to go via a VPN or internet, don’t really know what i am talking about when it comes to these things

Mine worked in France

It will work, yes, but you may need a VPN to be able to access subscription services. Live BBC should be fine, but catch-up may require a VPN. Not sure about Discovery+ for the vuelta, the issue is that the coverage is sometimes available in one country but not in another

you won’t be able to access prime video whlie running a VPN, and whlie it will work without the VPN, the available content may be different

Yep it will work but the apps will know you are in France and the content you can access is different in each country.

eg Channel 4 On Demand app only works when you’re in the UK.  Netflix and Prime video worked fine but the content available was slightly different.

So either a get a VPN to pretend you are still in UK and use what ever services you currently use to watch your stuff.

Or check who is showing  the things you want to watch in France and download their app / get a subscription with them.

It depends who has the rights in the respective country. I have Discovery+ but couldn’t watch the Olympics in the Netherlands

If you have free roaming on your phone and can set it up as a hotspot most apps will work as if it’s in the UK, as your traffic will route through your isp as if you’re in the UK. If you’re hooking up to local WiFi this isn’t the case, you’ll mostly be able to access a slightly limited version of netflix/prime apps (mostly first party content, not stuff bought off other studios one)

I’d be amazed if iPlayer worked at all over a non VPN WiFi connection, but I’ll admit I’ve not tried

You can install a VPN on Firesticks (we use Express VPN, though we pay for it).

Also, I think Amazon link the account email address to the country of origin so Amazon services can be a bit awkward when out of the accounts home country. Shouldn’t be a problem for BBC or Discovery though….

Great thanks all…

French resident here….. I use Expressvpn on our Firesticks and Cube and whilst it works for all the different streams, you do have to change VPN locations on the Express app for different providers. For some strange reason Discovery+ thinks I’m in Germany when I use the Midlands server and Disney will only launch if I use Docklands (iirc). Likewise Iplayer hangs on one server location but works fine on another.

Last winter we took the camper down to Portugal and the Firestick and VPN worked superbly on 4G.

NordVPN when I’m out in Spain, works fine.

NordVPN has 100% cash back on Topcashback at the minute