comment - 21 06 2011

So i am a great fan of all things american, american television, movies, podcasts, news, information technology...but im not in america. They have wonderful services like HULU Plus, netflix things that as i am not there i dont have access to. Is there a way to fool these services into letting me watch them.

The first is simple, to watch any streamed USA television you need to be seen as being in the USA, it isnt good enough to log onto their website, your IP gives away the fact your not there and you get "this content is not available in your country". Thankfully this one is extremely easy to fix, just use a VPN a virtual private network, you get an account in the USA and connect to it from anywhere. Then the sites see the USA IP address and you can watch what you want...to a point. the services are relatively cheap (compared to flying there once a month to watch your shows) for a few dollars you get access to all their local content. The only drawback is you still live in your country so you cant sign up to any of their premium or paid content as you need a usa address.

Next you need an address, so things like hulu and netflix need a USA registered adderess to enable you to register for them, this is their way of protecting the contents. Well to get round this you need 2 things, an address and a credit card. So there are a few services, designed for shopping, that will give you an address (not a PO Box as they wont work) that you can register some need a fee to maintain but again thats cheap). You register and get that address.

The last hurdle is how to pay for things, you have a american IP address and a physical address, last you need to be able to pay them with a USA. Prepay cards to the rescue, the americans have virtual credit cards, you can register using the address you bought, and have them email you the virtual card details. Thats it, you now have a USA address and usa payment method on a usa address, you can now happily watch surf and sign up for american content...

surely though it would be simpler for them to just let anyone who pays watch anything they want this would stop piracy there would be no need for it. until that happens these three steps are all i need and for $30 and then $7 a month for the VPN i can pretend to live there...EOL