I want to watch the livestreams of the public swiss television on SRF 1 - Live - TV - Play SRF which uses geoblocking and can’t be accessed outside switzerland.
I don’t want to use VPN or Smart DNS.
Does anyone know a free HTTPS proxy in switzerland that’s accepted by srf.ch or
is it possible to use a HTTPS Tor server in switzerland for this purpose or
do I need to set the exit node in the Tor Browser configuration?
do I need to set the exit node in the Tor Browser configuration?
You can try this by putting this in your torrc file
ExitNodes {ch}
Everything I read seems to say Tor is not meant for streaming
@BobbyB I opened the torrc file. The file has been completely empty. According to an example I found on the internet on setting the nodes, the torrc file should NOT be empty but already contain some entries. I’ve written ExitNodes {ch} StrictNodes 1 into the file, saved and closed. After starting Tor Browser, it did NOT use an exit node from switzerland. Why doesn’t it work?
When editing Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/torrc and adding ExitNodes {ch} StrictNodes 1 to it, after restarting the browser it works here. Not very fast, would not recommend for streaming, but downloading is possible if you have time…
@atari I checked the path and if I made a typo but both is ok. Any clue why it works for you and not for me? Because I don’t want to make changes to my ‘normal’ Tor Browser, I just copied the Tor Browser to another folder with copy and paste from the beginning. I edited the torrc file of this copied Tor Browser and added the above line. Can this have something to do with it, why it doesn’t work for me?
EDIT: The name of the ‘root’ directory of the copied Tor Browser is not tor-browser as usual, I renamed it. Could this be the reason?
Probably related to your copying - please try to change the “normal” torrc, you can create a copy of the original file and restore it if anything goes wrong…
@atari Please see my ‘EDIT’. Could this also play a role?
Please use the torrc-file in your “original” and only make a backup of this file.
@atari I made a backup of the ‘original’ torrc file and then edited this file. Now it works and I have an exit node from switzerland.
I wonder which actions were executed by copying the tor-browser ‘root’ folder, actually, so it didn’t work this way.
But besides that, there’s a new issue. Though the geoblocking message on SRF 1 - Live - TV - Play SRF isn’t displayed any longer and there’s a window with the SRF logo (probably for the livestream) but instead of starting the livestream or showing a ‘play button’ there’s a circle that turns (maybe something like a progress bar) where should be a ‘play button’. EDIT: When I click the connection icon on the address bar and try other connection combinations, it’s the same.
Is that rather because of a slow connection or because of a codec issue? I don’t have any problems with livestreams in Firefox so I think the usual codecs are installed.
@tora just tried with a Firefox using the socks5 proxy of the TorBrowser with the Swiss exits settings. It also does not play, but shows presence of DRM, so can’t say if it is codec or DRM related.
The DRM software involved is definitely not present in the TorBrowser, so if you want to continue experimenting with this setup, try another browser using your socks5.
By the way, the torrc is always empty if you did not change any of the default settings of your browser.
At the very beginning I did a websearch for free HTTPS proxy switzerland. Only found 2 or 3. None of them worked. Either the connection was denied or due to Network Timeout.
Isn’t there a way to use a free HTTPS proxy?
AFAIR some time ago a livestream didn’t play on Firefox and complained about some DRM thing. I made a change to the DRM settings of FF and the livestream played.
After playing around with these settings in Firefox about:config
Disable WebRTC:media.peerconnection.enabled = false
and/or
Force WebRTC inside the proxy:media.peerconnection.ice.proxy_only_if_behind_proxy = true
and using socks5 of TorBrowser bound to a Swiss exit, this came up in the console:
[6900][Stream] DRM: licenser error! --com.widevine.alpha update, XHR complete. status is "" (403), readyState is 4. Response is {"code":130302,"message":"Content is not available via the proxies."}
Guess you are out of luck with proxies and have to pursue other ways of watching Swiss live TV…
You may also have to take into account the point of view of the broadcaster. They may not have the rights to broadcast outside of Switzerland and could be sued if they do or cannot demonstrate that they are doing the best they can to prevent it. I’m sure they would love to show you that program.