No one likes to miss out on their favourite TV shows or big games while they are on the move. Not only is it frustrating to have to wait for the conclusion of last week’s exciting cliff-hanger, it’s even more annoying to have to stay away from Facebook and Twitter for days afterwards in an attempt to avoid spoilers and chatter from your friends who have seen the show that you missed.
The good news is that satellite TV operators are starting to move with the times. You can stream a lot of shows online thanks to services such as DirectTV Everywhere and Sky Go.
Streaming Your Service
Not all satellite TV services offer streaming. You can see some comparisons of different satellite services here. Both DirectTV Everywhere and Sky Go are designed for domestic usage and may not always work in foreign countries. You can get around this by signing up for a VPN in your home country.
A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. You connect to the VPN using your iPad, laptop, or whatever device it is that you want to use to watch satellite TV on and then connect to the TV streaming service via the VPN. You can use VPNs to bypass region locking on most services.
Most on-demand video services offer a mixture of live content and back-catalogue shows. It is well worth signing up to them if you travel within your own country and you should be able to make them work abroad as well.
Using a Slingbox
Another way to access satellite TV while abroad is to purchase a Slingbox and connect it to your receiver at home. Leave the Slingbox running and connected to your home network. You can then use the Slingbox to control your home satellite TV subscription and have it record, playback and stream TV shows, movies and other broadcast content to you wherever you are in the world.
With the Slingbox, there is no requirement for a VPN. You are connecting to a device that you own, using your own connection, so you do not have to worry about region locking or setting up a VPN client on your computer or tablet PC.
The Slingbox requires you to have an active internet connection and satellite TV subscription at home and a connection on your device to receive the content. Watching satellite TV using a Slingbox is still a form of streaming, but the Slingbox monitors the speed and stability of your connection and adjusts the quality of the stream accordingly, ensuring that you should never have to worry about buffering or sudden, severe changes in quality.
Sam Roberts is a travel blogger who has a passion for technology. His day job involves selling software for a high-profile CRM company, which operates on the international stage. He writes about his travel experiences in his spare time. He loves comparing flight upgrades and hotel satellite TV services. Sam especially enjoys US comedies and dramas.
