The world, especially Europe, is filled with French people working abroad, many of them living in other countries for several years, away from their land, family, friends, and culture. The latter is one of the elements that people from France miss the most: the food, the arts, the filming industry, the desserts, the landscape, the cities, museums, monuments, and much more.
An essential part of the French culture is the arts, mass communication, and media. The French love their film industry, TV shows, series, and other documentaries and productions, so it is logical that expats and people temporarily working abroad miss French channels and TV grid, not to mention the live sports events, such as the football Ligue 1.
France Télévisions and its channels France 2 and France 3 are some of the most popular TV options of the public variety. Other options like Canal+, Canal Play, myCanal, TF1, Molotov TV, France TV, 6Play, D8, France Pluzz, OCS (Orange Cinéma Séries), Gulli, Play TV, Eurosport Player, L’Équipe, M6, Arte, C8, W9, M6, 6ter, Home Time, Sixième Style, Comic, Crazy Kitchen, Stories, and many more are highly sought after by French people.
French television has numerous quality options for entertainment. It has news channels, sports coverage, entertainment and fashion shows, the hottest series and soap operas of the moment, dramas, documentaries, music channels and online stations, and more.
But expats and people working abroad might not have access to the vast majority of these sites and services, because of geo-blocking restrictions. If you are, say, in Colombia, and you try to reach one of the mentioned online channels or streaming services, a message like this will appear: “Nous sommes désolé cette vidéo ne peut être lue en dehors du territoire français. Code erreur: 542”. That means: “We are sorry you cannot watch this video outside the French territory.” That is the dreaded error 542.
But you shouldn’t feel disappointed by reading that message because the Internet provides you with the proper tools to bypass the geo-blocking measures that these sites implement to prevent people from seeing content that is destined for French people.
How about making these sites believe you are in France, without being there? That will do the trick! But how do you do this? You can achieve dozens of things with the aid of a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.
VPNs implement encryption protocols and measures to make sure that the data and traffic you share with websites and services online is protected from the possible advances of hackers trying to take advantage of your lack of awareness and steal valuable information from you. Also, governmental institutions will not be able to supervise every move you make, and even your Internet service provider will fail to sell your browsing history and shopping patterns to every company that may want it.
Most importantly, VPNs allow you to bypass international blocking because it lets you hide your IP address and borrow a new, temporary one that you will choose for yourself among the many addresses available from your VPN provider. If you are in Japan and want to watch the Ligue 1 game between Paris Saint Germain and AS Monaco, you only have to log in with your preferred VPN and access the live streaming of a channel broadcasting the game, like Canal+, L’Equipe, or Eurosport Player.
How to watch French TV outside France
Enjoying the best of French TV from anywhere in the world is quite simple. To do it from a computer using VPN software, you would need to:
- Get a quality VPN provider to stream content in France.
- Log in to your VPN and launch it.
- Choose a France server.
- Establish a connection to the selected server.
- Wait a few seconds (usually less than ten) until your device establishes the connection.
- After successful connection, open the live stream of your preferred French TV option.
- Done! You can now enjoy French TV, no matter where you are!
How to watch French TV outside France with a VPN for mobile devices (in iPhone)
Watching French television is possible on your smartphone and tablet, too. If you have an iPhone, then these steps will be perfect for you.
- Identify and acquire a quality VPN option.
- Go to your phone “Settings.”
- Tap on “General.”
- Then, tap on “Network.”
- Choose “VPN.”
- Tap on “Add VPN configuration.”
- Select details like the security protocol you want to use.
- Write the information (username and password) of your preferred VPN.
- Done! You can now stream live content from French sites.
You can also manually install a VPN on Windows Personal Computer, with OpenVPN settings:
- First, you have to get the OpenVPN, downloading it from the web.
- Install it on your Windows PC.
- Open a French page that you want to stream from your home.
- From the OpenVPN, select a French server.
- Click on “Connect.”
- Refresh the page of the live stream.
- Done! Now you can watch French sites and services from your PC.
Best VPN for streaming French content
When choosing your Virtual Private Network service provider, you have to carefully evaluate what you need to achieve and compare that information with the characteristics and features that each alternative can offer you. Some options are best for increasing security and privacy but are slow and don’t work for streaming, while some are best suited for playing all kinds of content but may allow a security leak or two. The best offerings, however, let you do everything.
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 |
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|---|---|---|
| Multi-platform Compatible | ||
| 256-AES Encryption | ||
| PRICE | $5 for 1 month with code "best10VPN" | $6.95 a month |
| Website Rating | 9.9 | 8.8 |
| 24/7 Live Chat | ||
| Residential / Dedicated IP for permanent streaming access | ||
| Has Mobile App + PC / Mac Support | ||
| Stealth VPN / Advanced Obfuscation techniques | ||
| Visit VPN Provider | Visit TorGuard | Visit PIA |
Some of the most reliable VPN for streaming French sites are:
TorGuard
This is, according to many experts in cybersecurity, one of the best VPN to use not only for streaming content in France but also for everything else. It has very secure encryption protocols and no traffic limit.
One of the most attractive traits of TorGuard is that you can connect to five different devices at the same time, and it also has one of the more reliable customer services, willing to answer your questions and offer assistance at any moment you may need it.
PIA
At $6.95 per month, Private Internet Access, or PIA, is more than affordable. It has adequate (and multiple) encryption measures, and it lets you achieve high speeds on your online streaming. As a drawback, its customer service takes a while to respond to your inquiries.
IPVanish
One of the fastest VPN services in the market, IPVanish makes up for its somewhat navigation-unfriendly layout with the speediest connection and a vast number of servers around the world. Other weaknesses include a not-so-good customer service and a confusing app.
However, it has many positive attributes: no logs policy, a kill switch to protect you even in the event of a connection loss, DNS leak blocking, port 443 support, efficient encryption protocols, and, above all, a lot of online privacy.
