Hulu.com has lots of interesting TV Shows and TV espisodes (like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, The Office, South Park, Family Guy). But if you're outside USA, you will get a message that these videos are not availably outside USA. Other web-sites will also show you that you can use them from the U.S. only:
Sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed from within the United States (Hulu, a popular video hosting service offering high-quality streaming video of TV shows and movies, primarily from NBC and FOX and their cable networks.)
The video you have requested is not available for your geographic region. (CBS HD Videos)
Only viewers within the United States can watch these full-length episodes. (ABC Full Episode Player)
Thank you for your interest in The CW. This service is currently available to viewers living in the United States. (The CW TV Video)
Veoh is no longer available in County_Name or
This video is not available in your region. (Veoh Internet Television)
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. (Pandora, a popular personalized music service)
All geographically restricted web-sites and country-based restriction relies on an IP address. Blocks of IP addresses are issued and assigned to a specific country in bulk. When an IP address is translated to be located in an unsupported country outside USA, the web-site blocks access of a user. Thus in order to overcome regional restriction you need to have an IP address belonging to a supported country (primarily the United States).
But you can pretend you have an IP address from the USA by using a VPN that has a server in the U.S.. This allows you to fool web-sites like Hulu, Fancast, ABC Full Episode Player, Veoh, CBS, the CW and watch geographically restricted videos outside the USA. Also this allows to listen to the geographically restricted radio stations and music services like Pandora and Last.FM outside the U.S.
VPN is not cheap. Streaming videos consume lots of traffic, so you can hardly find any free VPN that will allow you to download or watch online videos. But you can still try free VPN solutions.
If you need a U.S. IP address you may try freeware
Hotspot Shield (Windows / Mac OS). The program was originally intended to provide secure VPN tunnel for users accessing Internet via unsecure wireless networks (like public Wi-Fi hot-spots). When you browse Internet using Hotspot Shield, you do it with a VPN IP address (in this case you can pretend to be located in the U.S.)
Unfortunately free Hotspot Shield is limited to 5 GB of monthly traffic.
Other free options: alonweb.com (1Gb per month, 2Mb per request), your-freedom.net (A rudimentary service is available for free. It will provide a bit more bandwidth than a modem connection and up to six hours of usage per day.), cyberghostvpn.com (free basic version -
connection speed cannot be guaranteed, automatic disconnection after six hours, 10GB traffic limit per month).
You may also use paid VPNs:
StrongVPN,
HappyVPN,
HotSpotVPN, Ivacy, AlwaysVPN, WiTopia.
Please note that many VPN services require you to install their software. Few of them allow to use OpenVPN.
Also note that many VPNs limit your bandwidth and don't like when you watch too many online videos. Make sure to read the plan details carefully. Some VPNs have special plans for watching videos. For example
HappyVPN offers plans for unblocking USA TV websites from abroad, for unblocking BBC and other UK websites, for unblocking German TV, for unblocking UK + USA TV from abroad.
11-03-2008, 12:10 PM
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