I've just bought a Kodi box so I can watch F1 live rather than spending the day trying not to hear/read about the race before the highlights come on. 

I've tried to connect it without success! I have read that I need a VPN.

What is a VPN, and can I have my 'normal' ISP, and a VPN?

Thanks

 

A VPN is a "secret" connection to the internet. You can spoof the internet to believe you are in another country for instance. However, you are going to lose bandwidth.

 

Whilst living in Spain earlier this year, we had Orange Spain fibre and wifi. However, watching UK TV was often difficult since BBC / ITV players check your location before showing content.  I used a VPN to simulate that I was in England and Bingo - SWMBO had her soap operas, and I didn't have to suffer 2 months worth when we got home. We got about 9Mb on the VPN as opposed to 76Mb on fibre, but it was fine for streaming TV.

 

My boy used a VPN to tunnel under the Great Firewall of China when he lived there for 7 months. The Chinese internet is a Google free zone cut off from the world in many ways, but having a VPN up and running before you go there means you can escape to the real WWW.

 

So yes the VPN works alongside your ISP and is supposed to hide your activity from it.

 

You could use a VPN to pretend your Kodi box is in the USA for instance, where F1 is (or was last year) free-to-air live.

 

I have used a VPN most successfully on laptop & tablet, but my Amazon Fire stick didn't seem to manage very well running the VPN and Kodi at the same time.  Still, many VPNs do a free trial, and offer tech support,so they will help you get going and if your Kodi box won't manage it you wont lose any money.

 

Kodi runs on PCs tablets phones etc - if you can use one of those to cast channels to a smart TV then the Kodi box isn't needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 31 March, 20188 yr by camelspyyder

Using a VPN, however, is against the terms of service for lots of streaming services. Netflix don't like you doing it and actively block VPN servers. 

hotspot shield elite might work for you, google it, I think you get a week or a months free trial to test it - can't remember , been using it for years now here in Europe!,

I now have a newer and more powerful Amazon Firestick 4K and it can easily run a VPN and Kodi / ITV hub / BBC iPlayer etc at the same time. All this winter in Spain we had realtime UK TV without major issues.

For the OP, here's a list of worldwide pay and free F1 channels for 2019:

 

https://www.totalsportek.com/f1/formula-one-tv-channels/

 

You should be able to find these with Kodi and a VPN.

 

 

Edited 1 March, 20197 yr by camelspyyder

On 01/03/2019 at 15:46, camelspyyder said:

For the OP, here's a list of worldwide pay and free F1 channels for 2019:

 

https://www.totalsportek.com/f1/formula-one-tv-channels/

 

You should be able to find these with Kodi and a VPN.

 

 

Thanks for that, I see that there is only one live F1 (British GP) race on terrestrial tv this season so I'll having a look at that list.

In Germany with multiple Firesticks including latest 4K version. Using Express VPN and no issues with Netflix, TVPlayer app, BBC, C4, C5 or ITV apps.