How to watch ABC iView, News 24 & other Aussie TV services overseas

Want to watch ABC News 24 online when you're travelling overseas -- or just enjot some of your favourite TV shows using online 'catch-up' channels like the ABC's iView and programmes from the commercial channels?

It's not as easy as you'd hope: the TV networks block their online video channels to Internet users from outside Australia.

Fortunately, there's an easy workaround for these restrictions. It's a clever bit of technology called a 'Virtual Private Network' or VPN, which disguises your location to make it appear that your notebook, tablet or even your smartphone is still in Australia.
Just follow the steps outlined in this article (we've covered how to do it for both Mac and Windows).

What is a VPN, and how does it work?

VPN stands for "virtual private network" and it works by creating an encrypted link between your computer and a server somewhere else. It's somewhat similar to the technology used by banks to secure online banking websites between your browser and the bank's computers.
The technology was originally invented to allow businesspeople to connect in to their company network from remote locations safely, encrypting company info as it was transmitted across the internet so nobody else could tap into the connection and harvest it.

However, VPNs have a wonderful side-effect that can help travellers craving a hit of Australian TV while they are overseas: the location of your computer, when connected to a VPN, is disguised. If you are in the USA and connect to a VPN server in Australia, your computer will appear to be located in Australia.

This defeats the 'geoblocking' that the TV networks' websites use to stop people accessing the videos outside Australia.

The VPN service that Australian Business Traveller journos use is Witopia. It's very affordable, starting from US$40 per year with an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee; has 24 hour live-chat tech support; and you can make your computer appear to be in Sydney, many cities in the US, many cities in the UK and Europe, and several cities in Asia.
That means you can also use Witopia while you're in Australia to watch online video from overseas which is usually available only to viewers in that country, ranging from news and sports to regular catch-up services.

Note: Australian Business Traveller is not affiliated or partnered with Witopia — we're just recommending a service we know to be reliable and easy to set up.

How to watch Australian TV overseas with your Windows laptop

Got a Mac? Skip down to our Mac tutorial.

Step 1: sign up at the Witopia website

Go to the Witopia website and choose a plan. Note, Australian Business Traveller is not affiliated or partnered with Witopia — we're just recommending a service we know to be reliable and easy to set up.
If you are not travelling to Belize, Canada, China, Morocco, Guyana, Italy, Oman or the United Arab Emirates (UAE) you can get away with buying the US$39.99/yr PersonalVPN PPTP service.
However, if you are visiting Belize, Canada, China, Morocco, Guyana, Italy, Oman or the United Arab Emirates (UAE), you need to get a more secure service which is less easily blocked by the governments and ISPs of those countries — the  personal VPN SSL service.
Note: if you want to be able to watch Australian TV on your iPad or iPhone, you'll have to subscribe to either the plain PPTP service, or the SSL/PPTP combination service a year. This is because the Apple's iOS supports PPTP VPNs automatically, but not SSL VPNs.
Choose the service appropriate to you and proceed with the sign-up. For this tutorial, we selected the personal VPN SSL service, as it's the most secure and hardest to block type for use on a PC or Mac. Our instructions below are specific to the SSL account type and will not work for the PPTP one.

Step 2 - Download the Witopia software
You should receive an email in your inbox that looks like this. Click the link we've highlighted in red to go to the Witopia page that activates your service and lets you download the software installer.

This page of instructions should appear. You could follow Witopia's instructions from here on, however we've continued our tutorial below so you don't have to change over to a different set of instructions (also, ours is tailored specifically to the issue of watching Australian TV while you're overseas!)

Click the activation link, and you'll be taken to this page, where you'll be asked to put in the order number and your email address. It's important to put "ORD" in all caps before the number, and your email address in lower case.
If you copy and paste the details from the email Witopia sent you, also make sure there are no spaces before or after the information, as that may cause the login to fail.
For example:
ORD123456789
example@email.com.au

The next screen allows you to activate the service.

On the next screen, click continue to start the process of making the Witopia software. This software has your account details baked into it, so don't share it with anyone else. The benefit of this all-in-one approach is you don't have to do any tricky configuration yourself (which is common with most other VPN providers.)

Once that's done, a link will appear on screen that allows you to download the installer.

Step 3 - install the Witopia software
When the file has finished downloading in your browser, locate the personalVPN_Installer.exe file in your downloads folder, and open it.
If a message like the below appears saying you need the Java runtime environment 1.4.0, download and install Java from this website, then re-run the personalVPN_Installer.exe file.

Follow the installer steps as shown below.

After installation, there is one more important step you have to do manually if you are running Windows 7 or Windows Vista. Right-click on the personalVPN desktop icon and select properties, then click the compatibility tab and tick the box "Run as Administrator". Click OK. This allows the software to run correctly; Windows will otherwise block it.

Step 4 - run the Witopia software and connect to the VPN

You can now run the Witopia app by clicking the personalVPN icon that has been installed on your desktop. A small icon should appear in your taskbar in the lower right-hand corner of the screen with two red squares in it.

To watch Australian TV while you are overseas, you need to connect to an Australian VPN server. Right click on the personalVPN icon and select the "au sydney" menu option, then "connect" from the pop-out menu.

Once you've selected the Australian server, you should notice that the personalVPN icon in the taskbar goes green to indicate that it is connected.

You should now be able to access any of the Australian TV websites to watch full episodes online, and live ABC News 24 streaming video.
See our huge A-Z list of full episode Australian TV shows to watch online and which websites to watch them on.

When you're finished watching TV, you can disconnect from the Sydney VPN server by right-clicking on the personalVPN icon again, selecting "au - sydney" again, then "disconnect" from the pop-out menu.