The public service broadcaster for Ireland is known as RTE, which stands for Raidi Teilifs Ireann. They’re one of the older broadcasters about, operating continuously since 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. It allows you watch the majority of RTE content and programmes over 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.
Maybe you’ve heard this term, ‘geotargeting’ plays an important part in determining what you can do 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.
Quite sensible in this case, yet geotargeting is often used to block access usually. It’s quite a simple process, everyone connected to the internet has an IP address to identify themselves. 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. It’s the same with BBC Iplayer, if you’re a non-UK surfer then you’ll get blocked from Iplayer. If you want to see how I did it – try here, on my US RTE post.
Fortunately there is a workaround to access the content. 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.