Watch Netflix Outside The USA

Why would someone want to watch Netflix outside The USA? Probably because it's awesome. What other service gives you UNLIMITED movies and TV for eight dollars a month? Ok, Hulu does, but let's face it, Hulu is much more of a TV fan's site, and Netflix is more for movies.

Even better than cheap movies and TV, is the fact that you can use just about anything to use it. iPhone, iPad, Windows phone, Blue Ray, HD Television, Tivo, and lots of other stuff. Almost anything you want. The only problem is that you can't watch Netflix outside the USA. If you're in the USA, you could probably care less. However, for people like me, an American outside of the USA, it's a big deal. Not only do I have a Netflix member ship that I want to make use of while I'm away, where else am I going to get High quality movies?

Ok, I could download them. I don't feel that guilty about the whole "media piracy" thing, so it's not a guilt trip that I'm feeling. I do care about quality and convenience though. I'm in France to study for a semester, and sometime I just want to chill out and not want to worry about speaking French, not think about my classes, and not wait for a stupid download from The Pirate Bay or whatever torrent site. I also don't want to plan ahead, leaving movies downloading overnight in preparation for the next day. Lost of the time the quality of the movies is terrible, and I'm sure that I get lots of viruses from them. You can never trust those pirate videos.

So the point is that I want to watch Netflix outside the USA, and now I've found a way I though I'd share with you. It's called a VPN.

You see, Netflix can block you from streaming video from their site based on your IP address. Because I'm in France, Netflix can see that my computer has a French IP, and won't stream to me. They don't have a problem with France, they only have to see that it's not American and can block me.

Hotspot Shield unfortunately doesn't work anymore. When it was able to allow people to watch Netflix outside the USA it was too slow anyway. Anyway, a VPN helps you to change your IP address. By rerouting your signal (before it reaches Netflix) to a server in the USA, your actual IP address becomes coded and "invisible". This way Netflix can only see the IP address of the VPN server, which is of course American because it's in the USA. You can use this same trick if you want to watch BBC iPlayer outside The UK.

I paid $70 for six months. It wasn't the cheapest out there, but I don't have to wait for buffering. I'm sure that you get what you pay for with these things. Even if you don't and it's just a placebo effect, at least I feel like I'm getting what I pay for, and that's good enough for me. I've read that some VPN's can slow down your Internet speed because they have to reroute your request for the Netflix site.

Anyone else who wants to watch Netflix outside the USA definitely needs a VPN.