Use VPN on the Smart TV: Here’s how

HOW DO I SET UP A VPN?

June 20, 2021 at 11:30 a.m.

Anyone who wants to watch foreign content on their smart TV often fails due to geoblocking. A VPN can help here. This is how you install it on your television.

1. VPN on the smart TV is already worthwhile for the iPlayer
   

2. Use BBC iPlayer with VPN
   

3. The alternative: set up Raspberry Pi as a VPN WiFi router
   

4. Set up VPN for Smart TV via Raspberry Pi
   

5. Activate OpenVPN in Raspap
   

6. Conclusion: VPN on smart TV can be worthwhile
   

Most of the new televisions are out these days Smart-TVs – and thus small media center PCs. The televisions from the major brands have everything a computer needs: an operating system, interfaces, network connections – and of course an app store. This includes, among other things, apps from the well-known Streamingdienste, but also software from the major television broadcasters.

In addition to Netflix and Prime Video, there is above all the BBC iPlayer Interesting: The streams the entire program of the British BBC similar to the media library apps from ARD and ZDF. The BBC offer is similarly extensive, but many BBC productions also have cult status in this country, including “Doctor Who“, “Sherlock“or”Peaky Blinders“. New episodes of these series appear much earlier on BBC iPlayer than on most streaming services – and in their unsynchronized original version!

VPN on the smart TV is already worthwhile for the iPlayer

Reason enough for series fans to get used to the BBC iPlayers to deal with a German smart TV. This can usually be installed on smart TVs without any problems – but for legal reasons it does not allow most content to be delivered to German smart TVs. This is due to two hurdles: That BBC-Benutzerkonto – and the IP address.

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The latter can be accessed via VPN “Make British”, the former must also be used as a British account. It’s easy, however: simply create a BBC account and enter the United Kingdom as “Country”. The BBC also requires a zip code: you can simply google it by googling the name of a British city and “Postal code”, for example “Manchester Postal code”. Then your BBC account will be “British”.

Use BBC iPlayer with VPN

Now comes the tricky part: you have to bring your BBC iPlayer – and with it your Smart TV – into the VPN to get a British IP address, otherwise you won’t be able to load any content into the app. The problem with this is that most VPN services do not deliver apps for smart TVs, so you have to go one step lower and secure the online connection of your TV set with a UK VPN server. For that there are different possibilities:

• You can use your SmartDNS VPN provider try, but it doesn’t necessarily work.
• You can VPN connection of your PC or share Macs, but this is very time-consuming.
• You can buy a router with OpenVPN client functionality, for example from Asus, or flash an old router to OpenWRT, which is quite complex.
• You can install an additional WLAN on your router for VPN use, via which the SmartTV runs. This is very easy with a Raspberry Pi and the Raspap-Software.

Probably the simplest method is to use SmartDNS: This is a DNS service that your VPN provider (such as NordVPN or ExpressVPN) is made available. In order to “activate” your Smart TV for the BBC iPlayer and other foreign content in this way, you must first set up SmartDNS for your regular IP address and then add it to the Smart TV:

You can then use iPlayer (or other streaming services) with British or American content. Important: Not every television is approved for the iPlayer app, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t appear in the AppStore. You can still enjoy other streaming services in their US version. If that doesn’t work, it’s because of the cache. If you cannot empty this in the app, you have to delete the respective streaming app once and reinstall it.

The alternative: set up Raspberry Pi as a VPN WiFi router

The solution with SmartDNS does not cost anything and can be set up quickly, but it has two decisive disadvantages: On the one hand, you have to update the whitelist IP address in your VPN account every time you change the IP of your DSL or cable connection.

And you have to do without IPv6 on your router, which is not always optimal. Sometimes that’s not even possible. In such cases, it makes sense to set up an additional WLAN access point through which the VPN connection of the Smart TV runs. This is very easy with the Raspberry Pi handicraft computer. You need the following things for this:

• A Raspberry Pi 3, 4 or newer (these models have WiFi on board, whereby the Pi 4 also supports WiFi 5)
• The right power supply
• A microSD card with at least 8 gigabytes of capacity
• Raspberry Pi OS
• An OVPN file from your VPN provider and the appropriate access data

To start the setup, you first have to fill up the Raspberry Pi with its operating system. Load the current one Raspberry-Pi-OS-Version and copy the image with the tool Balena Etcher on the memory card.

Mounts the memory card and puts an empty file here called “ssh” (without extension) to activate the SSH function. Then you can insert the card into the Pi, connect it to your router with an Ethernet cable and connect the power supply. Once the Pi is up, you do the following:

Set up VPN for Smart TV via Raspberry Pi

• Connect to the Raspberry Pi via SSH. Enter in the terminal or the Windows command prompt ssh pi@raspberrypi a. The standard password is “raspberry”.
• If the SSH connection is established, you should first include the package lists sudo apt-get update update and then with sudo apt-get full-upgrade bring the system up to date. Once the updater has run through, you can use the Pi once sudo rebooty start anew.
• Now you can start the actual installation of Raspap begin: First connect again with SSH on the Raspberry Pi. Give the command curl -sL https://install.raspap.com | bash a.
• The quick installer from Raspap will now guide you through the installation of the access point. Once the installer has finished, you have to restart the Pi with sudo reboot. Then you have a full-fledged small router running on the Raspberry Pi. Its highlight: It supports OpenVPN in the client version, so it can serve as a VPN hotspot!

The new Raspi hotspot appears after the restart as WLAN “raspi-webgui” in your WLAN list. You can now set it up by connecting to this WLAN. The associated password is ChangeMe. Now enter the IP address 10.3.141.1 in the browser: You should now and enter “admin” as the user and “secret” as the password. By the way: You should change all passwords as soon as possible. Now setting up the OpenVPN connection is child’s play:

Activate OpenVPN in Raspap

• First download an OVPN file with the location Great Britain (or USA, if you want to enjoy US content!) From your VPN provider. For example, you can find them for ExpressVPN here, for NordVPN here. Attention: Not all VPN providers provide OpenVPN configuration files!
• In addition, you may need special access data for the OpenVPN / OVPN files. If your provider offers a corresponding service, they will help you find out in their FAQs.
• Now click on “OpenVPN” in the Raspap admin interface, enter the special VPN access data here and upload the OVPN file. With a click on “Save Settings” the VPN connection is active: All Internet traffic that runs through the Raspberry Pi runs automatically through the VPN server.

You can now connect your Smart TV to the new OpenVPN hotspot via WiFi and activate it for streaming content. Other devices can also be easily brought into the network in a protected manner in this way.

In addition, you automatically have a mobile hotspot, which you can turn into a full-fledged mobile router with a little effort with a UMTS surf stick: For example, if you want to bring several devices to the Internet in your holiday home or campsite.

Conclusion: VPN on smart TV can be worthwhile

Basically, despite the comparatively high effort, it is not wrong to think about setting up a VPN service for smart TV. In addition to certain advantages in terms of anonymity – after all, you never know what data your TV set collects about your use – VPN or a connected SmartDNS service has the advantage that you can receive streaming content from all over the world directly on the TV.

If you prefer to use a router with OpenVPN client mode or a Raspberry Pi with Raspap instead of the SmartDNS service, you also have the advantage that you can bring several devices into the network in addition to your Smart TV.

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