Possibly the biggest floral hoopla on earth, the Chelsea Flower Show, is happening now in Great Britain and for some unexplained reason the BBC won't let anyone outside of the UK watch their coverage. And to make sure of it they won't let you access their iPlayer from outside the UK. Turns out their is a workaround known as VPN (virtual private network). A VPN basically fools the iPlayer into thinking you and your computer are parked in Merry Olde England watching the coverage. Essentially it routes you through a British based IP address.
I learned about this ruse through friends, Jan and Dave Dobak. Dave had tried ExPat Shield, a free service, but it kept lagging and hanging up. By googling "watching UK show in the US" or something similar he found a paid service that worked much better. Only cost him $3-4 for a month. I'd post which service he used but I can't remember.
I wanted to watch on my Ipad so I checked the App Store for VPN apps and found several. I went with TunnelBear because it only costs $3 a month and was easy for this non-techie to set up. Worked great although to picture suffered from pixelation for the first few minutes (lag?) but that's a small price to day for several hours of plant lust indulgence. The Brits take Chelsea seriously and offer at least a half hour of coverage a day. Dobaks told me they may even show alpines in later broadcasts!
I think it may be a little more involved to set up a computer for VPN access but that's what your friendly nerdy kid, grandkid or neighbor is for. My nerd kid comes home from college tomorrow but luckily I didn't need him and was able to enjoy almost two hours of plants tonight.
Jan