The
2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony starts in just two days, hosted in
Sochi,
Russia. It is currently billed as one of the most expensive Olympics
ever. With the progression of the internet more and more events are now
possible to be viewed online and in the majority of cases live as they
happen. Unfortunately buying the rights to broadcast such events comes
at a great expense and numbers as high as US$4.38 billion have been
reported being paid by US network NBC to broadcast the event and future
ones up until 2020.
Due
to the cost issues there are very few countries who are going to be
broadcasting the winter games with the main ones being the US, UK,
Canada and Australia. Unfortunately for those based in the US the
network NBC which has the rights will require you to have a subscription
to that channel and to login to watch the games, this means for a huge
portion of american viewers and viewers who do not reside in one of the
three remaining countries that your chance of watching the games is
pretty much reduced to zero.
With events stretching from the 6th February 2014 right up until 23rd February 2014 and up to
89 countries taking part from Albania to Zimbabwe that is an awful lot of events that are unavailable to an awful lot of countries.
But never fear!
There is a way to watch the Sochi Olympics online anywhere in the world!
The UK broadcaster the BBC will be showing all events streamed live
online. The downside to this is you have to be a UK resident to access
this directly, however there is an extremely easy way to appear as if
you’re in the UK to the BBC website thus bypassing any geographical
restrictions that are in place and best of all, the product to do this
is totally legal!
What you need is a
Virtual Private Network, or better known by its initials, a
VPN.
A
VPN is basically a computer (server) somewhere
else that feeds everything you do on your home internet connection
through that third party connection and then on to the internet, their
original use was by business so workers away from home could access the
office. It probably sounds really complicated but the process from most
providers is just
one or two simple clicks to get up
and running. In this case you need to connect to a server that is in the
United Kingdom, once connected anything you do on the internet now, to
the websites you visit, appears to them as if you’re located in the UK,
when you disconnect you’re back to your normal connection. Due to this
the BBC website will now stream you the live Winter Olympics events as
if you are sat in the UK, even if you may be in Australia or China, the
US or even Barbados. It really doesn’t matter where you are in the
world, this process works for anyone.
So once you’re connected all you have to do is then head over to the
BBC Winter Olympics site. Its also possible to connect to a Canadian server and catch some of the events on
CBC.
You’re
probably thinking it sounds too good to be true? Well, a VPN services
costs money, but again, don’t worry, a good provider will only charge
you about $5-$10 (£3-£6) at most and lets be honest, the Winter Olympics
are only going to be on for about a month, so one month service will be
ideal. There are plenty of other good uses for a VPN like watching the
British
BBC iPlayer anywhere in the world or watching the American
Hulu service anywhere in the world, so you may wish to keep your service after the one month, but even if you don’t, you have only spent the price of
one beer to have access to
hundreds of events as they happen which is roughly
650 hours!
So you’re probably wondering,
what VPN service do I get
and how do I know if it is a good one? Luckily for you our site is
dedicated to reviewing
VPN services and so we’ve already tested more
than a handful of providers to weed the good from the bad. Personally I
would recommend looking at one of the following three providers because
not only have we reviewed the first two and found them to be reliable
and fast but a provider like
VPN also has simple software and apps
for all systems from Windows, Mac, Apple and Android.
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Name of the Provider
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Website
Address
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Hide My Ass
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Strong VPN
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Switch VPN
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Pure VPN
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IPVanish VPN
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Hotspot Shield Elite
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