I’m moving abroad soon and would like to keep access to my home country TV apps on Apple TV.
Obviously there’s no VPN setting in tvOS - but I do have a Synology NAS (DS218+).
I’ve connected to my VPN service on the Synology, and during that process it asked if I wanted to make the VPN accessible to other devices on my network - which is exactly what I’m trying to do!
So the Synology is connected to the VPN service fine, the VPN connection is showing an IP address and a Gateway IP address.
The variables on the Apple TV networking setup are IP, Subnet, Router and DNS.
I think I’ve tried every combination of things but I’m not managing to get a successful connection!
(Disclaimer, I don’t use a Synology for my NAS, so I can only speak of it in general terms.)
In order for the Apple TV to use a VPN, you need to set its default gateway to a VPN-connected router, and that device needs to be configured to route all traffic over the VPN connnection.
And in order to specify a gateway, you typically also need to specify a static IP address.
So I’m guessing what you need to do on the Apple TV is:
Set your Apple TV’s IP and Subnet settings to a static IP and a subnet that matches your LAN’s IP address range.
Set the Apple TV’s Router setting to the LAN IP (not any IP address associated with the VPN) of your Synology
DNS would ideally also be set to your Synology’s LAN IP, and ideally the Synology would also be set to forward DNS queries over the VPN. But if you can’t get that to work, just use 1.1.1.1 and be aware that although your data is mostly going through the VPN, any time you do a site lookup that info is exposed to your ISP.
After doing all this, the Apple TV may be set correctly but the Synology still not be properly configured. You should see if you can get VPN stuff via the Synology working on a laptop or other device to confirm that the Synology’s VPN-sharing stuff is actually working.
I think all you should have to do is change the router setting on your Apple TV to the IP address of the NAS. You might have to change the DNS, too, but you can just use a public one like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.
Can you post the IP address, subnet, and gateways configured on the NAS (the “real” IP and gateway, not the VPN IP and gateway) and the Apple TV?
It could be that the uk server is recognised by iplayer as being a false one, can you change location to another uk server, or get in touch with your vpn to provide another IP address. I have the same problem at work as my company uses a Dutch server so I use a vpn for uk access but sometimes have to change location
You can even set it up to allow you access to content from multple regions. Example - I can access content from US, New Zealand, and Japanese apps that would normally be geoblocked.
There are 2 things you have to do in order to make it work: 1- VPN and 2- spoof the location of your Apple TV. Some apps ( BBC, Directv Now, etc.) use the location of your Apple TV and this is something you cant hide with an VPN. You can change the location through XCode
