In an earlier episode we taught you how to stream your favorite television shows while traveling abroad. Sadly, not all shows are always available for streaming. If you’re hooked on Game of Thrones and want to watch the latest season, for example, you’re mostly out of luck.
It took more than eight months for Season 3 to be released on DVD or made available for download. Considering that Season 4 just wrapped up last week, you won’t be able to see the fallout from the Red Wedding until sometime in 2015 (long after your blabbermouth friends will have likely spoiled any surprises.) The same is true for Homeland, the third season of which ended in December 2013 but still isn’t available to stream more than six months later.
Only, none of that is entirely true.
Both programs are currently available to download in the UK. Strangely, the British version of Amazon sells these shows whereas the U.S. site does not. Ideally you’d be able to spoof Amazon.co.uk into thinking your computer is located in Great Britain with a VPN. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work in this case. To buy anything from Amazon UK you need a credit card with a UK. billing address. If you don’t have one, no download for you.
Thankfully BlinkBox.com is a bit more forgiving. BlinkBox is a UK-based video streaming service similar to NetFlix. Only with BlinkBox you buy the shows or movies you want rather than commit to a monthly subscription. And while you still can’t use U.S. credit cards to buy content from BlinkBox, you can make purchases with BlinkBox gift cards widely available at Tesco Supermarkets.
This obviously only works if you’re physically, rather than virtually, in the UK. But once here, BlinkBox lets you download copies of these hard-to-find shows to your computer’s hard drive. And that means you can take them with you wherever you go many months before they’re available back in the States.
