Clampdown on TV 'Dodgy Boxes'

Most is but not all. Dodgy box can be a broad term so not sure exactly what you had. Having a good IPTV sub lets you pick out the best from any film, box set and live TV channel. Could it be you weren't using the "dodgy box" enough to justify keeping / updating / paying for it? Nothing wrong with that.

Noticed it over the weekend also while watching Sky Sports in a friend's house who has Sky Broadband. I flicked the VPN on (built into my IPTV app) and it worked without any issues or throttling. I'm with Eir and have never needed a VPN in recent times.

I started using a VPN a year or so ago, it just autostarts on launch and works away.

I have 2 services. One says you need a vpn when there are PL games on, one insists you can't use a vpn on their service or you may be banned.

No idea but they are very clear on the subject. They send a message out on telegram once a month.

That would include broadband too, as opposed to tv subscriptions.

it's 39% according to a document produced in by the BAI in '22 about tg4+1 & cula4 launching. not including people taking it by cable or legit iptv/streaming.

Yes I would think their basic package is probably still quite strong - people like being able to record.

But yes, sports and movies must be taking a big hit.

It’s not about changing your public facing IP, it’s about changing your network route to the destination.

With a VPN, your ISP only sees the destination as being the VPN provider. Therefore they can’t block the traffic. They have no visability of what happens after the network traffic reaches the VPN.

A simplistic view would be like this:

Without VPN: 'Dodgy' box → Router → ISP → IPTV provider

With VPN: 'Dodgy' box → Router → ISP → VPN → IPTV provider

That's ass backwards.

Using a VPN doesn't change the incoming IP address.

If the ISP is blocking incoming traffic from x.x.x.x then you using a VPN will have no effect on that.

I agree with the other poster who says that blocking connections out (requests) to know IPTV streaming services could be bypassed, as the ISP would be monitoring requests out from your IP address and if you change that via vpn then it wouldn't be blocked anymore

If it is only outgoing requests that were blocked by the ISP, then a Proxy Server (relay?) which retains ones own IP address (do they still exist?) could bypass the block as I understand it, but a VPN, or Proxy that altered ones IP address would be necessary to bypass an incoming IP address block, by the ISP, of the target service. Is that incorrect?

Just to be clear I'm not trying to start an argument here or anything I'm just trying to figure out how the use of a VPN solves the problem of ISP blocking access to IPTV streaming services.

Traditionally I would have used a VPN as a way to "disguise" my location (via IP address) to access internet services that were not available in my location.

So you install a VPN and run it and now you have a IP address in the US, so you can login to US Netflix because US Netflix see a request coming from a US IP address.

That's straight forward.

But if an ISP is going to block traffic incoming traffic from a certain IPTV streaming service (based on IP) then it makes no difference what your IP address is, it's going to block traffic from the source IP address to "any" destination address within it's network.

So what use is a VPN there ?

The example you give would imply that the VPN sits between your ISP and the IPTV streaming service, not between your ISP and device.

So any ISP blocking of IPTV streaming service (based on IP) does not work as the source address is now the IP address of the VPN not the IP address of the IPTV streaming service.

Is this how it actually works ?

So who is doing the blocking and how does the VPN resolve it ?

What you describe would be a situation of the IPTV streaming service (or something else upstream of your ISP) doing the blocking.

They block requests from certain locations (based on IP address), at certain times, and a VPN bypasses that because you are making the request from a different location (based on IP address).

But why would they do that ?