Watch ITVX while Travelling Abroad in 2024

This post was originally created in 2012 so you can imagine that it’s rather out of date now.  Surprisingly though in the last ten years little has changed in the methods people use to bypass the increasing number of geo-blocks that exist online. Having said that,  ITV Hub and all the other UK TV channels have however been in the forefront of the efforts to counteract them. In this post I’m going to show you a product which works better than any standard VPN with 100% success rate to watch ITV abroad in my experience – you can find it here if you don’t want to read the post (but please do!).

So although the standard use a VPN and hide your location by connecting to a UK server still works in some cases, the failure rates are growing rapidly.  More and more people are finding their VPN service doesn’t work anymore, at least when you’re trying to watch ITV Hub abroad or enjoy the BBC News from outside the UK.  In fact currently I have 10 active VPN subscriptions and only 3 of them provide reliable access to these platforms anywhere in the world.   There are also signs that these may also be affected soon, although they still work at the moment.

This post is the latest from 2023, and represents the result of my research into a reliable and affordable way to access ITV Hub and the other UK streaming service platforms when I travel.  So for a hassle free solution, read on – although the BBC in particular are updating at the moment so check with the provider especially before signing up to a long term plan.

How to Watch ITV Hub Abroad in 2024 Without Failures or Frustrating Errors

Being anonymous and having your browsing encrypted and protected is a great feeling. But there are multiple other reasons that using a proxy server is useful, and here’s yet another one – watching the UK ITV abroad.

ITV is the UK number one commercial station and it has often got some great dramas and fantastic shows. For those of us brought up in the UK there are lots of soaps that are actually older than we are! But as usual watching ITV outside the UK is not straight forward as your IP Address again dictates what you can watch.

Many times on this blog I’ve shown users of Identity Cloaker how they can watch BBC iPlayer, stream ITV,  Hulu and Pandora from any country on the planet. I’ve also added some other options on how you can Watch UK TV.

However in this post, I’m going to show you a better way – which is more reliable than any other VPN on the market.  You can use it for all UK TV channels including to watch the ITV Hub abroad – so if you want to watch Emmerdale Farm and Coronation Street on your computer, tablet or phone then  you have come to the right place.

Stage one – Why it’s Getting Harder to Unblock ITV with  a Traditional VPN App

Over the last few years, VPNs have become increasingly unreliable for bypassing the country restrictions for one simple reason – too many people are using them.  It’s not the functionality of the VPN itself, this is still very difficult to detect directly.  However the issue is that they share the same IP addresses throughout their user base.   So although BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub still can’t detect the VPN, they can hazard an educated guess that when 30,000 + people try to stream Coronation Street through the same IP address simultaneously – something funny is going on.

These huge numbers of concurrent connections which access ITV Hub on the same IP address are an obvious giveaway.  No-one shares their internet connection with that many people, and it even rules out workplaces, shared flats and colleges too. The probability of it being a shared proxy or VPN are virtually 100%.  Which makes it incredibly easy to spot these UK servers and deny access to these addresses.  Even the best, most advanced VPNs can be identified if it’s addresses are shared with too many people.

When I watched Susan Boyle first appear on ITV Player and got hooked on Downton Abbey from a Spanish holiday apartment all those years ago, it didn’t really matter much which VPN you used.   As long as they had servers in the UK then you’d be fine to access. It matters very much now, so which one should I use and why is it any different.

Stage Two – Operation Unblock ITV Hub

So if we’ve identified that the VPN isn’t an issue in itself, but rather the fact that all the British IP addresses are shared out among thousands of people – the solution is fairly simple.   Stop sharing addresses or at least limit the number using each one.  This is actually the reason that some VPN’s work better than others – not many people use Identity Cloaker to watch TV on so there’s less people sharing addresses to access ITV content.  It’s why it’s still a good option at the moment, although if TV stations keep lowering the limit on the number of shared connections per address even this will get caught.

So we can still use a VPN via a UK proxy server and look like a legitimate UK user.  What we need though is an IP address that we have exclusive access to when we connect through ready for Coronation Street or Love Island.

I thought having a unique UK IP address just for my use, would be a problem for the following reasons –

• Very Expensive – exclusive access to anything is normally costly!
• Not Available – all the mainstream VPN services base their entire business model on sharing addresses.

Until I found this site, a specialist company who provide all manner of proxies for a variety of online activities.  They mention streaming TV and bypassing Geo-blocks but I learned that it’s not a market they’ve targeted.  However on investigating their offers, one particular service looked very appealing – exclusive proxies which you can check out by clicking the link below.

These are prices for the exclusive proxies, don’t worry about the professional or business plans – you don’t need these.  The basic plan is all you need and will give you access to all British TV including BBC and ITV Hub outside the UK.    With this plan you must pick a British IP address, you only get one but it’s not used by anyone else.  This exclusive access effectively bypasses every block used currently by the services like ITV Hub.

Remember you must pick a UK address or this won’t work for British streaming services.  After assigning a UK IP address then you’ll need to choose a connection method, which is were the next bit of good news is received.   Although this service is advertised as a proxy service it’s actually also a fully functional VPN server too.  You can pick from a variety of connection method depending on what sort of device you’re using.  If you’re using a computer or laptop I suggest trying the browser extensions as they’re very easy to use and I found them extremely fast.

Willl ITVX Work Abroad?

Then you simply follow the installation instructions, which are little more than a couple of keypresses and you’re ready to go.  For the Chrome extension you’ll see an icon added to the top left of your browser where you can enable the UK VPN connection.

Here’s the menu, to enable just click on ‘Turn On’ before you visit the website.  All your traffic will then be routed through the VPN server and allocated your unique UK IP address.  It’s worked every single time I’ve tested it over the last few weeks.  It’s also much faster than the vast majority of conventional VPN services I’ve tested.

The result you will soon be watching ITV on your computer irrespective of where you are in the world. You can even install the software on all your other devices too. Great for those of us who travel, sit down at a computer anywhere and watch your home TV programmes – ITV abroad – no problem at all.

It sounds too good to be true, and for anyone who’s struggled with VPN access over the last year or so to all the major UK TV sites it’s a massive relief.  It even works 100% with Channel 4 which has also been quite aggressive blocking VPN access recently.

So what are the drawbacks – well the major one is that you only get a single UK address (although you can buy more from other countries).  This means that you are restricted to accessing content to the UK and your present location.  In reality, most of the VPN users I know never used the connections to Australia, France, Germany and so on.  Although nice to have, the value of an exclusive address is far  more valuable.  If you want to access another country content, e.g. the USA then you’ll need a US IP address which effectively doubles the cost.

The security aspect is still in tact, the VPN extension whichever you choose will hide your location and encrypt your traffic.  Remember though if you choose the browser extension then your email and other traffic won’t be protected.  If this is important, you’ll need to use one of the VPN client installations from the setup screen.  I tried SoftEther which worked as well as any other VPN clients I’ve used.

Why not test it yourself here, the company is called IPBurger and they have been in business for around 7 years now.  Their support is quick and friendly, although they don’t have that many TV streaming customers yet.   To be honest I don’t envisage many issues as the exclusive address really seems to work well, speed was extremely fast too so buffering shouldn’t be an issue.

There’s currently a $10 setup fee which is waved if you order more than one month, so three months trial will cost the same.  It works so much better for British TV than anything else though and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.  With the single UK IP address it works out the same sort of price as even the cheapest VPN providers.

Best Shows to Watch on ITVX Abroad

There’s so many great shows on ITVX is difficult to choose a few, however we’ve tried to pick some favorites.   Here’s a quick list of some of the best shows you can enjoy on ITVX abroad when you use a VPN or proxy to hide your location.