Watching BBC Iplayer on the Wii Abroad

I have had a couple of people asking me if it's possible to watch BBC Iplayer on the Wii using Identity Cloaker, so I had a little check and it's good news. The Wii has recently had an updated BBC Iplayer channel created which you can download and use for free, of course if you're watching from outside the UK you'll get blocked normally by the geotargeting restrictions. That's the beauty of using Identity Cloaker, it's designed specifically to protect your data and privacy, but it also means that you can truly surf anonymously, so that you control what you can view online not the website.

The network of available servers is now quite significant, there are multiple proxies in all of these countries - France, Sweden, Germany, UK, Ireland, USA, Canada and the Netherlands and quite a few more planned I believe.   If you need access to a resource restricted to any of these countries you should be able to access it by selecting the right server.

Anyway I checked it out and for Identity Cloaker users who are the owners of a Nintendo Wii, it's relatively straight forward to use it to watch Iplayer on your TV instead of your computer.

Watching BBC Iplayer on the Wii

Well I'll presume you've got your Wii connected to the internet, which is fairly straight forward to do in most cases. To use BBC Iplayer you just need to go to the shopping channel and download the IPlayer channel which is a free download.

*** Apparently you might need to change your localisation settings on your Wii to UK first, as the BBC Iplayer channel is not offered to Non-UK connected Wiis.   I haven't tested this as I already had the channel from the UK - but I'm told you should be able to download from the shopping channel if you set your Wii to the UK.***

Now if you're in the UK this is all you need to do, but if you're not then you will get blocked in the same way as directly from your computer. The good news is that the latest updates to the Wii connection settings allow the input of both a proxy and advanced settings with usernames and passwords.

You'll find the proxy server settings by selecting your connection from the Wii System Settings and then selcting the internet connection tab.

 Pick the connection you're using and scroll through the options until you find the Proxy Server screen, here's the changes you need to make.



From the Proxy Settings Page

1. Change Proxy Server to Use
2. Under Advanced Settings input one of Identity Cloakers UK IP addresses
3. For the Port number - 4040
4. Select Username and Password to Yes
5. Select Advanced Settings and put your Identity Cloaker Username and password in 

Then all you need is to save the settings and go back to the Wii Screen, select the BBC Iplayer channel and it should work fine.  If you use a free proxy you can skip the username and password section, but you'll probably need to change the port to 80 or 8080.  If you use a different paid proxy service you'll need to get the correct port to use from the proxy administrator, it probably won't be a standard port.

Is it worth it? Well it takes very little time to set up and the BBC Iplayer quality is pretty good, although possibly not as good as on your PC, I tested on a 32" TV CRT so not sure what it would look like on a 50" plasma.

If you don't fancy getting involved in connecting up a laptop or PC to your television it's actually a great option.  It's certainly watchable quality, many Identity Cloaker users are also using a similar method on the PS3 apparently as well, although I haven't tried that (just use the same port number and a UK proxy).   Potential problems with Wii Iplayer viewing could be with speed, particularly streaming across a poor Wifi connection, I had no problems but my signal was very strong as my access point was next to the Wii!