Can I watch RTE outside Ireland
RTE stands for Raidi³ Teilifs ireann and is the public service broadcaster for Ireland. They are actually one of the oldest public broadcasters anywhere, operating from 1961. The Irish Government appoint a board to run the station, it is very near to Irelands version of the BBC.
It is certainly why it is missed by Irish citizens who move from home, and why many were so pleased at the announcement of RTE Player which is a similar version of BBC Iplayer. This allows you access to most of RTE content but via the internet. Alas all the homesick Irish were to be disappointed when they tried to access the RTE Player from abroad, the dreaded Geotargeting stopped them.
Now some of you are probably not aware of this term, but ‘geotargeting’ plays an important part on what you access online. The most obvious example is when you go to Google, you will always be directed to the Google Home page related to your location e.g Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.IE.
Makes sense in this example yet unfortunately geotargeting is mainly used to block access. The process is quite simple, as everyone who is using the internet has an IP address to identify them. This IP address is registered and can be traced to a physical location, so all a web site has to do is look up the location of this address from a database and it can determine where you are.
This is what RTE Player does, it looks up your IP address and if it’s not registered in Ireland you won’t be able to access the content. BBC Iplayer does the same for Non-UK surfers, in fact most of the big media sites block access to their content outside their specific country. If you want to see how I did it – try here, on my US RTE post.
But the truth is that this doesn’t stop people accessing the shows if they use a workaround. So to watch RTE player connect through an Irish Proxy and you’ll be fine. When you connect throught the Irish proxy your IP address will be listed is Irish and RTE Player will work perfectly.
It’s perfectly simple to do, the trouble is find a proxy to use which is why I generally use a commercial one as they are fast and secure.
