Teeveeing – UK TV service closed down? Users in Spain unable to access UK TV via Internet Service?
Teeveeing is an internet based TV service. It provides, for a payment, limited UK TV channels, via its own servers.
As Teeveeing uses its own servers to relay the UK TV content, it is bypassing the required geoblocking that is employed by official broadcasters online services that restrict access to the UK TV content to viewers in the UK only as per the contracts between the broadcasters and rights owners.
Teeveeing is the new name / owner of the service TVMucho, that was closed / shut down / takenover a few months ago.
This weekend, many internet forums and Facebook pages and groups have been inundated with users of Teeveeing, complaining of “blank screens”, no channels, error message and on screen warnings from the Police, with no reply from Teeveeing support.
Speculation is rife as to why many expats have lost access to their UK TV via this internet service, with some Teeveeing customers reporting on various expat forums and Facebook groups that :
“Teeveeing support have replied : “Thank you for reaching Teeveeing Support! We currently experiencing problems with our CDN provider which is in charge of delivering fast, efficient, and secure delivery of content to websites and Internet services. Their technical engineers are already working to resolve this issue. thank you for understanding.”
“I emailed to find out what had happened.I got a reply saying it was shut down after legal problems.”
“Screen went black this afternoon, just get a black page on browser or app. However, if I use VPN to connect to UK, France, Germany or Portugal, it all works fine. However, without VPN, nothing!”
“Teeveeing support replied. Whilst they are fixing the problem the only way you can access Teeveeing at the moment is to use a VPN Service to identify your connection is NOT Spain. UK, Germany, France, Portugal all work fine.”
“I saw on one notification I found while searching that the domain had been seized by the judicial spanish police”
“someone posted on Trust Pilot that there is a notice across Teeveeing site to say national police are involved”
Whilst personally I have not seen any notice on the Teeveeing webpage about it being seized by Spanish National Police, it is certainly possible with the recent pirate internet IPTV crackdown in Spain that access is Spain has been blocked by the National Police acting on a court ruling.
(Although this morning I did find the following image on a Facebook group thread about these Teeveeing issues, but cannot confirm that this image is from the Teeveeing webpage, that I am still able to access)
It is also possible that the issues are down to the Spanish Internet Service Providers, like Movistar and Vodafone and Orange have started to block suspicious streams, due to recent court orders issues in Spain. This has been an issue in the past few weeks with users of some pirate IPTV services unable to access the content. But this would only affect Spanish ISPs, yet people are reporting problems in Germany and Portugal and Greece!
It is worth noting that another service similar to Teeveeing, British TV Club, was recently been closed down by the authorities.
British TV Club was also popular with British expats as it also provided UK TV channels via the internet for a subscription.
British TV Club webpage has the following banner :
Showing that the British TV Club service has been closed, and the webpage taken over by antipiracy group “alliance4creativity”.
A user of British TV Club posted this on Trustpilot on the 2nd May 2024 :
Shut down with no notice, unable to contact anyone or get refund
This was a working and reliable TV service, that is, up until recently when I can’t access it at all. When I try to go to their website, all it says is “Maintenance mode” and then another message saying “The British TV Club has closed down for legal reasons.”
This happened completely out of the blue, out of nowhere, with no further explanation. Could it have been shut down permanently, or is it just a temporary shut down (as implied by being in so-called “maintenance mode”)? Who’s to know. They should be a little bit more clearer about that.
At the end of the day, I am unable to claim a refund, I am unable to contact the owner of the service, I am essentially unable to do anything at all. I’ve basically just been locked out with no chance of getting my money back.
When it works, it works. Reliably too. But unfortunately it just seems as though they have taken my money and ran. That is not okay.
Update 1139 05 05 24:
This post (now deleted) has appeared on one of the Expat Forums where the issues with Teeveeing have been discussed, from a new user with the username of Teeveeing, which is significantly different to the replies of “problems with their CDN provider” that they have been sending to their customers:
We are not going out of business. Some malicious right holder has files a police report against us. We are currently fighting the allegations with the Cybercrime department and are confident we should be back fully operational in two weeks. We are only company that operates legally at the moment, but some right holders from the US hate us and don’t agree with EU laws, rather then taking us to court they weaponise our legal system to do the complicated work for them. I am sorry to everyone that currently is struggling to access our service. For the meantime use this app.smize.tv with your current login details to access our service.
Unfortunately, one user has tried to use the alternate app that is suggested in the Teeveeing reply, and found that the app is not available in Spain, and so is still unable to access he UK TV service that they have paid for.
Update 08/05/24
Teeveeing has sent this message to its clients, which is slightly different to the CDN problem they said was the issue and that their engineers are working on a solution. It appears that the solution is to use a VPN to hide the fact you are in Spain, and “view” from another country. However, I have seen people in Portugal and Germany also having issues with the service, so is that another issue?
I have some important news about problems we’re facing at TeeVeeing.com, which might be affecting your service.
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) in the US has taken a big step by filing a police complaint in Spain over rights issues. We believe we have not done anything wrong, and this certainly isn’t the respectful way to handle it. After all, we have been around for a long time and have always been completely transparent. If the MPA disagrees with how we operate, they should have taken us to court to get a ruling.
Unfortunately, because of this situation, you might have seen some issues with our service. We’re really sorry about this and are trying to fix it as soon as we can. We really value your trust and support.
Our team is working hard to solve these problems and we hope to have everything running smoothly again soon. We also want to make our service even better for you in the future.
Thank you for being patient. We will let you know if there are any big changes. If you have questions, please reach out to our support team.
We’re grateful for your support and look forward to providing you great service again soon.
Warm regards,
Vincent Weberink
TeeVeeing.com
Update June 2024 : According to an reply from Teeveeing posted on Trustpilot, where recently Teeveeing have has many negative reviews, some users are experiencing issues with the service due to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which seems strange that is seem to be just affecting this one service. Wonder what the next excuse will be?
“Our developers have identified that the problem is due to three undersea cables in the Red Sea, which are crucial for global internet and telecommunications, being cut. This incident, possibly caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, has affected the following cables: Asia-Africa-Europe 1, Europe India Gateway, Seacom, and TGN-Gulf. The cutting of these cables is impacting most of our servers around the globe, causing the issues you’ve encountered. Unfortunately, this situation is beyond our control..”
I can access my TeeVeeing app via my smart TV app & phone app however cannot via my laptop, I don’t understand why this is.. will my access to this service be stopped altogether soon and will I need to find an alternative?
Difficult to say. Some people in Spain have no issues, others do. So could be down to the Internet Providers obeying legal obligations by blocking illegal services.
A quick glance at the trustpilot page for tving gives an insight as to their problems, lots of people complaining, no support, generic email replies…
Who knows if the service will be stopped. A few other services that are similar were closed down due to copyright and retransmission infringements around the same time as TVing started to have problems.