Be Excellent To Each Other

I have recently discovered Unblock-US, which for a selection of services, makes your internet connection appear to be in America. This means stuff like Netflix, Hulu, ESPN3, and Vudu work. In many cases, including Vudu, you can sign up with a UK credit card.

Vudu appears to be ace. If you have 4.5-9 meg internet and you are happy paying $5.99 a time, you can stream any of almost 10,000 movies in 1080p with 5.1 surround sound. 720p is $5 and SD is $4 and under. I've watched a few trailers and previews and it worked fine on my 11meg ADSL line. I'll report back once I've watched a full film but I don't anticipate any problems. Content is added on the same day the Bluray is released in the US, so the films on there are often still in the cinema here! The selection is far larger than the Xbox offers and better quality than iTunes has.

This is exactly what I want from an online movie rental service -- reasonable pricing, plenty of choice, and good quality.

Boxee does especially well with this. You untick "hide content from outside my region" and stuff like the Shows interface just exapands around the new content -- I watched two episodes of Chuck last night streamed from WB.com. However, there's a Vudu app for PS3 (I'm not sure if it's in the UK PSN store though).

This interests me greatly.

Yeah, it's relevant to a lot of people's interests.

Does it work via VPN, or some other crazy means? (Ah, I see it changes your DNS to use theirs)
Some people have reported good success by using StrongVPN, but this is limited to the VPN speed. I assume this works much betterer...

See, that's not actually any explanation at all. It doesn't explain how your IP ends up looking different without there being a tunnel in place, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how they tell if you've paid for the service or not -- it's not like DNS has an auth layer.

I have no idea, I'm pretty hot on what happens on my own network, but as soon as it goes into the ether, then it's all magic to me!

I also fear DNS poisoning attacks and other nastiness that could result from this. I didn't make the DNS change network wide, I just did it on the Boxee instead. This does mean I can't use Netflix and Hulu etc on the iPad though.

Also, grrr at the Boxee not having a Hulu Plus app yet.

All of this could result in my cancelling Sky and Lovefilm. My monthly media spend is now at ridiculous levels:

• £35 to Sky for HD (no movies or sport)
• £17 to O2 for ADSL
• $25 to Giganews for Usenet
• £18 to Lovefilm (5 discs at once)
• $5 for unblock-us, $8 for Netflix, probably eventually $8 for Hulu Plus

Some more detail, found by the power of google!

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r256407 ... nblock-us-

How USVideo is different from StrongVPN or HotSpot Shield?
There are several advantages of using USVideo over StrongVPN, HotSpot Shield and other VPN based or proxy solutions.

USVideo works with media players such as Roku, Apple TV, PS3, XBox and others, while VPN based solution works with computer only
None of your video/audio content or unrelated traffic goes through USVideo, therefore there is no bandwidth loss, data cap or privacy concerns.
Simpler setup, VPN works only on computer, so you need to setup it on every computer in your home.
No software to install.
Your IP remains your local IP. This may be important for other sites that you want discover your correct Geo location
Content from different countries is streamed transparently - no need to switch VPN

What about my privacy and security?
You're sending all DNS requests to our server, but we're changing routes only for sites we support.
We're trying to limit amount of data sent through our system (we're paying for every byte) and redirecting only sites directly involved in location validation.
This is much more secure than VPN or proxy solutions, where you have to send [almost] everything through their servers and you will never know what they do with this data.
DNS solution is more transparent to users and everyone can verify where data is being sent by comparing results returned by our DNS with "standard" DNS responses.

Most sites with somewhat sensitive information are using SSL encryption to protect users' data. Even if we were redirecting these sites to our server, we can't "fake" SSL certificates without being noticed (you'll see security warning in the browser when site certificate does not match with name), and wouldn't be able to see encrypted data.

Again, comparing to alternative solutions, if provider require special software installed in client's systems, then this software can either install "fake" certificates or "sniff" other users' data (e.g. passwords, credit card numbers, etc). Our solution does not require any special software, changing permissions or other potential security risks

I saw your tweets on it yesterday (?) and was going to ask how you did it as I'd played around with proxies to get Netflix running but it was a real pain to do.

Right, so what's happening is that when you request a site that's on their list, their DNS will redirect your request through a proxy they host. Or that's what I suspect is going on.

Sure, and it turns out that most of these service's geo-ip checking is only done on DNS requests. Which is surprising.

But how do unblock-us know you've paid for their service?

I had a look at an episode of Glee a shoot-em-up man's show during the week's trial. It seems to work really well.

Can't say I'll be paying for it when I'm already paying for usenet and Sickbeard takes care of things automagically.

I used to be:
£45 sky HD with movies
£18 BE internet
$10 usenetnow
£18 lovefilm

i'm now
£0 Freesat HD
£18 BE internet
$10 usenetnow

TV wise I just do the SickBeard thing
Film wise, these days I go to the cinema if there is something I want to watch immediately, or yarr them via CouchPotato.

I'd happily pay to download films if I could get them any way close to the quality I can get them for free! Much like when iTunes rocked up, I started to buy all my music as the service and quality was generally better than getting it via nefarious means. However online TV content and quality is attrocious in the UK at the moment, I'll check out this DNS magic and see what I can get. I'd be especially interested in the TV shows available, the backlog that is always up and the quality.

i assume they just check the incoming IP against their paid list, which could be tricky if you don't have a static.

I assume from Doc's question though that you don't register an IP to sign up.

Not for the trial at least. Just an email address to access the DNS numbers.

How much are Freesat HD boxes? What's the advantage over a no-contract Sky HD box - just PVR features?

I wondered if they could be doing the IP thing. Seems fiddly for customers on dynamic IPs (so most of them) using the service on devices like PS3s though. I'd imagine you need to visit the company's website in a browser to refresh the IP list.

@Cras- they'd record the IP address you signed up from, I'd imagine.

Yes, but if you try and use their DNS without paying, you get dumped to a payment page if you hit one of the redirected sites. Which can only be done via IP, surely?

I suppose the main advantage would be that you don't have to scroll through reams of channels that you don;t have access to.

Mine was £180 I think? one of these http://www.humaxdirect.co.uk/product.as ... at=Factory

You say "just PVR features" like it is no big thing but yes, that is the essential difference
Oh, and the Humax boxes aren't a bundle of shit that break every year

You say 6 bucks a time. do you mean per movie or per month as you said later on in the thread?

Topically, I would barely miss PVR because my Sky HD box is sufficiently dodgy that I not longer rely on it for anything. £180 is a little spendy; not sure I'd bother with that bit.

Vudu is $6 per film (with no monthly cost), with the usual 24 hour rental window to watch the film in. Unblock-US is itself $5/mo and without that none of this other stuff works. Netflix and Hulu Plus are both $8/mo, with no per-programme costs.

My justification was that I hardly watched anything on the Sky specific channels anyway, so the £180 was only 4 months of Sky, and then after that I was in the money
Haven't missed Sky in the slightest.

Nae interest to me, I've enough shit to watch without getting the merkins involved I've set up custom Firefox profiles with proxies* in them but only really used them to see if they worked.
*An Irish one & a merkin one.

Anyhoo, I'm guessing that for dynamic IPs you'll need to either run software to tell it your address on boot or log in whenever your router reboots to update it.

Aha http://portal.unblock-us.com/knowledgeb ... oblem.html

That's a good reason to stick to O2's more expensive static IP service.

Edit - although I suppose I could just make my server ping their site every 5 minutes or something...

This might work for your iPlayer woes too....

Oh, yeah, it specifically claims to do iPlayer (although it didn't work for a friend of mine in America).

Instead of paying for the unblock thingymajig, couldnt you just use the VPN service that you get "free" with Giganews?

I don't have a high enough tier with Giganews to get the VPN, it costs as much to upgrade my tier as it does for the service, VPNs don't work without fiddly config on each device that will use them (and not all devices will support them), and VPNs come with bandwidth problems that can restrict streaming, particularly when you're talking about 1080p video.

I've signed up for the trial, but I have to say it looks like a bit of a hack and is likely to end in tears.

Tried to stream in 1080p tonight, without much luck. Several "buffering..." pauses. 720p worked fine, however, and on my 40" TV not being able to have 1080p is a bummer but not a disaster. Even the SD Vudu films have 5.1, too, which is my other gripe about most steaming services.

There's a fair chance I'll drop Lovefilm for this.

Oh, Trooper - Vudu is fully integrated into the Boxee UI. The remote works properly, and all Vudu movies appear under the Movies tab - I've got over 11,000 showing in there now.

Interesting. Quite pricey if you watch a lot of films though, I'd much prefer a subscription model

At $5 each (720p), I'd have to watch six a month before it cost more than Lovefilm -- I think that's unusual for me.

Netflix's $8/mo is all-you-can-eat if you are happy with SD and 2.0.

I watch quite a lot of films, so could end up paying a fair whack.
I'd happily shell out $20 a month for all you can eat, 720p 5.1 streaming (assuming my connection can handle it, I'll try it out this morning I think

Oh my.

Hmmm. I have no tv playing gadget that will work with these services.