Watching Foreign TV Shows & Movies

Best Ways to Watch Foreign TV Shows & Movies From Abroad

If you're living overseas, familiar TV shows, movies, or sports programming from your home country can be easily missed, and it's no wonder why so many people are interested in finding ways to tune into their home country's television from abroad.

Unfortunately, depending on the country you're in (as well as the country of the TV you're trying to watch), getting the programs you're looking for can be a real challenge. In general, watching your home country's TV from abroad will involve two steps:

1. Subscribing to an online service: First, you'll want to find an internet protocol television (IPTV) or an on-demand streaming service that offers programming from your home country. Most major countries around the globe — including the US, the UK, and countries in Europe — have dedicated IPTV services, sometimes even run by the country's national telecoms provider. In smaller countries, local programming is still usually attainable via an IPTV bundle that comes along with programming from other countries.
2. Getting a VPN: Once you have a way to access programs in your home country, you'll probably also need a VPN, as many IPTV services only serve IP addresses from the country of origin. A VPN, or virtual proxy network, is advanced software that hides your IP address and allows you to browse the internet anonymously using a server in another country. However, even with a VPN, in some instances, it may not be possible to access an IPTV service in your home country, as some VPN IP addresses are blocked.

Fortunately, many premium VPN services have become increasingly affordable and accessible globally in recent years. In this short guide, we examine the top three options to find the best VPN to watch foreign TV and explore which one might be the best one for you. —

ExpressVPN — Overall Best VPN

Undoubtedly, ExpressVPN is one of the best VPNs on the global market and provides an excellent way to protect your online activity and access the global internet for all types of users, needs, and preferences.

For example, ExpressVPN is probably the best-in-class for streaming and surfing foreign versions of websites, allowing you to access most on-demand services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, and many others — all without any technical know-how.

When it comes to security, ExpressVPN leaves nothing to chance. It has a no-log policy (verified by independent audits). It will not track your IP address, browsing history, traffic, Domain Name System (DNS) queries, or your online behaviour in any other way. Obfuscated servers are available, although (on the downside), you'll need to know what you're doing to enable them. The service also allows fully-anonymous browsing, with a built-in automatic kill switch, AES-256 encryption (the most advanced encryption standard), IPv6 leak protection (meaning your actual IP address won't be leaked), a large number of servers and protocols to choose from, and many other security-first features.

To top things off, ExpressVPN's speeds are excellent, and the service frequently tops the rankings against its competitors in this category. And while ExpressVPN does allow a maximum of only five devices per subscription, in our opinion, this should suit most users just fine.

NordVPN — Best for Security

NordVPN is a world-class VPN that's neck-in-neck with ExpressVPN as the best VPN globally. It's pretty much on par with the latter in every way: blazing-fast speeds, dozens of server locations around the globe, impeccable security, and extensive customer support.

However, the one area in which NordVPN truly shines is its excellent security. Like ExpressVPN, NordVPN has a no-logs policy and won't track your activity (from browsing history to IP address to DNS records). Also, like ExpressVPN, NordVPN comes with a built-in automatic kill switch. However, unlike its chief competitor, NordVPN makes it much easier to connect to an obfuscated server (see the how-to on their website), although this isn't a big deal in a country without internet censorship. In general, NordVPN generally provides you with better control over your security features than the others on this list, and handling security is generally more accessible on its platforms (although it'll help to have some technical knowledge of how VPNs work).

Additionally, NordVPN is integrated with the Tor browser and is easy to configure with the OpenVPN protocol and PPTP and L2TP/IPsec (although these features are for advanced users only — for ordinary users, the default settings with obfuscated servers enabled should be sufficient for using this VPN.)

All in all, NordVPN is a top contender for the best VPN for watching foreign TV and it checks all the boxes. With its many features and privacy-focused platform, you won't go wrong with signing up to secure your connection.

SurfShark — Best Value for Money

An excellent choice if you're looking to save as much money on your VPN subscription as possible, SurfShark is a top-notch VPN service that offers you all of the essential features provided by the giants ExpressVPN and NordVPN — but at nearly half the price on the annual plan.

SurfShark matches NordVPN regarding privacy and security (audited for no-logs, secured with AES-256 encryption, secure tunnelling protocols, etc.), but these features are less customisable than on the latter platform. However, the out-the-box settings are secure, and the VPN will handle blocking unwanted websites and unblocking wanted ones without any problem, regardless of whether you're interested in streaming, torrenting, video calling, or practically anything else you'd do online.

A big plus about SurfShark is that it comes with unlimited connections and devices. This also makes it a good choice if you have many devices yourself or a family whose devices you'd like to secure.

Most impressive to us is SurfShark's pricing. Although its month-to-month plan is rather pricey (even pricier than NordVPN's), its yearly price is considerably lower than the others on this list and comes to just $3.99 per month (paid annually) — an outstanding deal as far as premium VPNs go. Considering you'll get almost all of the advanced functionality of the other two services for such a low price as this, we think SurfShark easily tops this list in terms of value for money.