How Can I Access the ITVX

One of the reasons people started to get interested in ITV, the commercial UK TV network was of course Downton Abbey. The period drama was hugely successful and was enjoyed throughout the world by millions of people. It was often a surprise to people that ITV has always had a really good track record on producing these sorts of drama investing millions of pounds in these high-quality shows. One of my favourites from yesteryear was a superb Sherlock Holmes adaptation with an incredible portrayal of the detective solving crimes in Victorian England.

The ITV Hub is the channels website where you can watch all their channels live –

ITV – Primary Channel
ITV 2 – Programmes and Shows for Younger audiences
ITV BE – Reality shows and documentaries
ITV 3 – Dramas, stories and soaps
ITV 4 – Sports
CITV – Children’s channel

Plus, you can watch anything from their huge archive with lots of older shows from over the decades. It’s packed full of programmes that where originally broadcast from any of the above channels.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem that will affect many of us, none of these are actually available from outside the United Kingdom. When you connect to the website it checks your location by checking on where your IP address is registered to. If it’s not registered in the United Kingdom, then nothing will work. You can upgrade to the premium version ITV Hub Plus which will work in the European Union (currently although this will probably stop after Brexit). I’m going to show you a better way though which costs less and opens up every other UK TV channel too!

How to Watch ITVX in USA

So, the crux of the problem, an issue which is becoming increasingly common across the internet is that access is denied based on your location. The UK TV sites are not the only ones to do this though virtually all country’s main broadcasters do exactly the same.

But fear not, there’s a solution to allow you to watch ITV from the US. It’s called using a VPN and you can see it in action in this video here. Just watch for a few minutes and you’ll see how simple it is – (it’s now called ITVX of course but the method works exactly the same way).

What the VPN does is to give you control of your digital location. If you need to look like you’re in the United Kingdom then just click on a UK server, for Canada click a Canadian server and so on. With VPN servers in lots of locations across the world, you’ll be able to bypass most online blocks with ease.

The UK connection will allow you full access to the ITV Hub whenever you want. Using the exact same method, you can watch the BBC iPlayer from Canada and the USA (even bigger than the ITV site) plus Channels 4 and 5 which have lots of great channels too. The UK seems to be among the forerunners of allowing free content to be broadcast online so it’s a great investment.

Most of the decent VPNs should work fine with the ITV Hub although there are some that have reported issues. One of the reported problems is that sometimes ITV checks the locale setting of your computer too. So, for example if you do have problems with streaming and your computer locale is set to the US it might be worth switching to the UK –

View the System Locale settings for Windows
Click Start, then Control Panel
Click Clock, Language and Region
Windows 10, Windows 8: Click Region
Windows 7: Click Region and Language
Windows XP: Click Regional and Language Options
The Region and Language options dialog appears.
Click the Administrative tab
On Windows XP, click the Advanced tab
If there is no Advanced tab, then you are not logged in with administrative privileges.
Under the Language for non-Unicode programs section, click Change system locale and select the
desired language.
Click OK
Restart the computer to apply the change.

Don’t do this unless you have issues though as many reports suggest it’s not necessary. Currently at the time of writing no other UK TV site does this check so just clicking on your UK VPN connection should be enough to stream the BBC iPlayer and all other sites.