Accessing Hulu, Pandora And Other Sites From Outside Of the United States
Duncan Riley
56 comments »
I can remember when OpenHulu launched thinking that the name was nearly false advertising; essentially it provided access to Hulu content away from Hulu, but only to those in the United States. Veoh and MSN have since followed suit and provide Fox and NBC content from Hulu on their sites, but like OpenHulu it still remains IP blocked to those outside of the United States (and possibly Canada).
Web based proxies have been around for a long time, but most don’t work with video, and even those that do don’t provide decent enough bandwidth from which to view content from sites such as Hulu.
One alternative service that has been in use for business for a long time now are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). VPN’s offer a secure pipe from where you can access the web, and in turn disguise the location of the user on the end connection.
There’s quite a few paid VPN services available, many at reasonable cost ($5-$20/ mth were a few I found on Google) but one service doing the rounds at the moment offers a VPN connection for free.
HotSpot Shield is a plugin for Windows or OS X that offers a free VPN service. There is a catch, it rather annoyingly adds a banner ad to the top of every page you visit, but at the ultimate price point of $0 most people will be able to live with it…well, at least whilst getting access to sites that were currently blocked, and the ads can be switched off on each page, but only after they have appeared.
Does it work? From Western Australia I’m currently listening to Pandora for the first time since May (still a great service.) Earlier this weekend I caught up with a new Simpsons episode, complete with ads from Hulu, then watched archival footage of the Nixon Resignation just for good measure. The only thing it didn’t work on was Joost which told me I should stop using a proxy…no matter, the blocked stuff is mostly on CBS.com anyway, and yes CBS.com works as well.
The speed wasn’t always great, but it was enough to watch video, varying between 600kbps and 1.3mbps on my 2mbps Cable connection.
I hesitated in writing this post because the more people who use services such as HotSpot Shield, the more chances we might end up killing them, or worse still Hulu and others might get smart and find ways of blocking it. Even if we lose HotSpot Shield today I’m betting given the strong demand services like this will have that others will offer VPN services as well, and hopefully free ones at that. At least I hope so, now I have Pandora again I’m really going to struggle if I’m forced to give it up again 
I use Last.fm. At least there are no restrictions and everybody can join in.
Just so you know, Canada is still blocked from both Hulu and Pandora. Well, I guess at least 1 Canadian is, ME!
Just go YouTube.
Chris
then this should work for you
Technicle
haha.
Yeah.. i wouldn’t bother to unblock the blocks..
hulu is actually pretty sweet now that i got an invite. it’s not perfect but it’s still pretty nifty. wish there was more content. the quality isn’t ultra perfect but it’s a good balance of speed and quality when i watch it full screen on a 15.4″ widescreen. loving it so far.
I get this: Disconnected [bandwidth exceeded]
Hm….has it been techcrunched?
Razvan
we might have killed it already, but its still working for me, just re-ran to check
I have been looking for a way to do this for YEARS! I live in Japan on a United States Army base. We are all American citizens and all but we have Japanese IP addresses. The Army provides a VPN but they block video sites. I wish there was another way. I guess its just another disadvantage of serving your country!
I’ve been using it for a while and it works in that it successfully bypasses the region blocking, but it seems to struggle with bandwidth - the videos were all stop-start stop-start.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on the BBC iplayer. The default BBC position seems to be that if it can’t confirm you are coming from the UK, you can’t see it. (Unfortunately, I suspect Hulu et al will adopt this position before too long.)
I’ve never enjoyed those location restriction, they’re so lame, does it prove anything, anyway now I enjoy hulu, a bit slow though, hope companies learn that restrictions are to be broken and open their products worldwide
All you need is youtube and joox.net
~ carversation.com
What about http://www.relakks.com .
pandora sucks, last.fm FTW
John John
sorry, Last.fm doesn’t support the internet industry so I struggle to support them. Pandora on the other hand…well there match up ability is superior, at least with the music I enjoy.
Alm2010> no, it gives you a swedish IP, so it won’t work.
Being the creator of http://tvparadise.org/ and non-US based, I have used Hotspot Shield allot, but I can’t connect anymore. It seems there is a monthly 10GB bandwidth usage limitation
Well I guess my last option would be last.fm if I can’t use pandora and hulu…
Nhick
http://www.itrush.com
I like last.fm as well.
Sweet! I got pandora back! You just made my day, thanks!
The problem with Hulu and Hotspot Shield is that Hotspots shield has a 10GB/month data transfer limit. I watched a bit of Hulu (OK, so I was watching show after show for a few hours) and very soon hit this barrier. However, It’s now January and I get the same error. I’m thinking I have to wait 30 days…
I get the same error of the bandwith. Damn it! Any help?
Dave Brubeck? Yer not gonna get laid here by putting up screen grabs with those musical tastes
BigTone
but I’m going to enjoy it none the less…and I’ve been married for 8 yrs, I don’t know anything about that anyways
Skyskull, Joel
we may have killed it already. Search Google for VPN or free VPN. I’m sure there were some others out there.
How much would people be willing to pay (monthly) for an American proxy pipe? It would be unencrypted so give better performance than a VPN.
Duncan, definitely try out MeeMix (you guys covered it a few days ago)… I’m in Canada and Pandora doesn’t work for me either… I absolutely adored it when it did work… but… now it doesnt
MeeMix has done a great job replacing it for me though 
Aydin Mirzaee
Another good and FREE service is iPig at http://www.iopus.com/ipig/
It even allows you to set up your own VPN server (e. g. on a friends’ PC in the US).
It works also well for using YouTube and Skype from countries where it is normally blocked
I have the iPig server running on my own PC so that I have a secure connection from any PC or hotspot in the world.
Hulu is really not worth the effort.
I use live365.com and love it.
Tried Pandora when it was available in Canada and did not quite like it so much. Probably because I did not use it for long enough so that it learns what I like.
I guess any of these sites cannot satisfy everyone’s tastes so that each one of them has a chance and an audience… Free market, after all.
Oddly enough, i can easily access Pandora without any problems, despite living outside the U.S; or more specifically, living in England.
However, i can’t access OpenHulu.
I learned of this a few weeks ago, but didn’t release the info publicly, because I feared that Hulu and Pandora would simply block it. Ahh, now they’ll get around to doing that soon i bet…
Dude, Thanks! I further tested it with Joost. Joost has some US-only channel including MTV, CBS, Warner Music Group and more. Looks like it works pretty well. i can now enjoy Punk’d from Joost now.
http://www.winandmac.com/tips/.....utside-us/
I’ve been accessing Hulu via HotSpot from outside the US (the Bahamas, to be precise) for a couple of months now, and it works fine - bar the occasional lag. I didn’t know about the 10GB/month data transfer limit, but then I don’t use it too often so probably am not even close to that amount. For me, the fun is just as much in bypassing Hulu’s stupid restrictions as in actually watching the shows! Hopefully more free VPN’s will surface now - as others have pointed out, they’ll probably figure out a way to block it now….
Been using Hulu in Canada for about a week. Hotspot shield does the trick.
???
No one here has heard of an SSH tunnel to a cheap web host???
Wow, that TV paradise guy knocked off Hulu almost exactly. . .
Works great from Italy too (on a high speed line), thanks for the tip. I’m listening to Pandora for the first time!
I use Ultrasurf for quite a while & works most of the time perfect (without any ad)
http://www.wujie.net/downloads/ultrasurf/u.zip
Originally made to bypass Chinese censorship but works also great for stuf like pandora (only with IE though). Sometimes PAndora kicks you out for a whila as ultrasurf apparently gives you a Canadian ip-adress. Shutdown u.exe & restart after a while… Great tool! & imho better than waht you advised…
No hassle with ssh tunneling & all the like of free cgi-proxies.
personalVPN from http://www.Witopia.net works well and is only 40 bucks a year. Currently includes a free PPTP account as well as the SSL (great for the iPhone, etc.) Free of Ads and forced browser control.
@#7…Anchorfree has a 5GB limit. I don’t think WiTopia has one. here’s a good article…http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/the_best_3999_i_have_spent_in.php
Is Hulu worth the trouble?
I missed my Pandora until I come across MeeMix (here)!
I like this service. I’ve been looking for something exactly like it!
I don’t mind the ads, except just now, pressing enter to go to the next line in this comment box brought up a pop-up ad with the Ask.com home page and the Hotspot Shield advertising banner. That’s kind of annoying. It’d be nice if they limited the ads to banner & rich-media ads only.
If you’ve closed the banner ad at the top of the page, then pressing enter in this comment box doesn’t bring up the new window. Good to know.
Anyway, the speed is great for viewing web pages but watching a video on CBS.com (which I haven’t been able to do till now, thanks to Hotspot Shield) is very sluggish and jerky. Any way to speed that up somewhat, so it’s watchable? I’m from British Columbia and have Telus high-speed ADSL as my Internet service.
Cheers,
Doug
Duncan as an Aussie that will return to Australia later this year after 5 years in the US I was wondering how I would catch up with all the services I use .
I came across Hoptspot Shield a while ago and got my bother to use it form Australia .
The content distribution services would prefer if content was global and distribution windows went away as it means more viewers for them .
If I cant access content I want trough these services I will just go the Bittorent route when I’m in Australia and ad revenue will be lost by the content distributors and owners .
Heh - interesting timing. My wife, currently in France, was planning on watching a few Netflix movies on her laptop. No dice since she’s out of the US.
She has VPN access on her laptop through her employer, and I told her to log into the VPN (an American university) and see if it works. Haven’t heard yet; then I saw your post…
I am curious about the comment: “Last.fm doesn’t support the internet industry.” I’ve been a long time fan ever since the audioscrobbler days.
Interesting article. My Girlfriend was in London last year and was unable to watch shows on ABC.com because of IP restrictions AND apparently time zone restrictions. I figured this out when she came back to the US and was still unable to access shows. She had the clock on her laptop set to London time/time zone, and until she set it back to EST, ABC.com wouldnt allow her to access shows. Pretty strange.
Thanks, Duncan. Great job!
Hi All,
I missed Pandora so much living in Ireland that I searched high and low for weeks for a solution. A simple Proxy wouldnt work cause the flash player wasnt going through that. I used TOR instead and it is working like a charm.
Full instructions and link here : http://www.cfdan.com/posts/Pan.....land_Again!.cfm
Dan.
Hi,
it really works well from Germany with Hulu and CWTV.com - but not with NBC… does anybody know what they might check beside the IP?
Dirk.
I use http://www.globalpandora.com and it simply works.
Harry
@Dirk:
You have to set your system time from Berlin to an US time zone. I am just watching NBC from Germany with an US VPN.