Written by Jackson West
Posted Monday, May 4, 2009 at 9:00 PM PT

 

How to Watch Hulu Around the World

Updated: For all sorts of complicated legal and contractual reasons, Hulu is not officially available to users outside of the United States. However, funny thing about the web — geographic restrictions have a way of being difficult to enforce.

And so it was with some delight that I noticed in a postscript about Hulu adding classic ’90s sitcom News Radio that a friend in Canada was suggesting an easy solution to watching Hulu north of the border: a free VPN service called Hotspot Shield.

I’ve certainly jumped through plenty of hoops in order to access the BBC’s iPlayer, which is similarly restricted to users outside of the UK. And an email to another friend who resides in London turned up confirmation that Canadians aren’t alone in using Hotspot Shield to access Hulu, as he’d heard reports of the same workaround.

How does it work? Well, VPN stands for “virtual private network,” so when Hotspot Shield is turned on your web connection is encrypted. More importantly, it also replaces your IP address with one from Hotspot Shield, which is based in the U.S. The idea is to protect your browsing from online snoops, but this little side effect means that as far as Hulu knows, you’re as American as apple pie and worthless subprime mortgages.

All you have to do is download the client, which works for both PCs and Macs, and you’re ready to go. It’s a lot less complicated and appears much more reliable than relying on proxy servers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way around.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when News Corp. and NBC Universal announced their online video joint venture eventually named Hulu. Now, I couldn’t be more of a fan — it’s easy to find great movies and television shows, which are offered in relatively high quality, and I can easily share my finds with friends through links and embedded clips.

So why isn’t the service being offered to viewers worldwide? Because of legacy distribution agreements between companies like NBC and international networks. Canadian and British broadcasters pay good money for the regional rights to popular shows, often airing them months after they’ve been broadcast in the U.S. Naturally, they wouldn’t be too keen on viewers visiting Hulu instead.

But viewers are already closing those gaps in time and space by downloading shows from torrent links on sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova. Wouldn’t it be in the best interests of networks to offer them a slick, easy-to-use product they can advertise against rather then ceding the market to less official means of distribution? And couldn’t they locally target those ads, even allowing current regional distribution partners to resell the inventory to local companies?

Dunno. I’m no media executive. What I do know is that if you’re outside the U.S., Hotspot Shield will get my embed of The Last Days of Disco above working fine. The movie isn’t even available on DVD thanks to (you guessed it) rights issues, so enjoy it while you can. Update: That didn’t last long; Hulu is now blocking Hotspot Shield users. Check out the full story.

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Topic: Online Video

Comments (31)

  • Well, I tried the Hotspot Shield a while ago but didn’t find it much useful. VPN topology is based on a central server through which all data is transfered. It’s obvious, such a solution poses a bottleneck which has not been designed with media streaming in mind. A video played through HotSpot Shield is rather jerky but still better than nothing.

    Funtomas — 11:53 PM on May 4, 2009 Reply

  • A video played through HotSpot Shield is rather jerky but still better than nothing.

    Search Engine Optimisation — 12:06 AM on May 5, 2009 Reply

  • I used to use HotSpot Shield for Hulu so I could watch Daily Show episodes and clips. But I found it jerky sometimes, although other times it was fine. I tried another program called UltraSurf, which updates it’s proxy list often and lets me watch both Daily Show and Colbert Report episodes in full from the Comedy Central website.
    However, I believe Hulu have upped their game and started blocking certain proxy servers, so I would recommend installing both and switching between the two, whilst checking for updates to the programs regularly.

    christopher grams — 1:07 AM on May 5, 2009 Reply

  • This is absolutely true. I, and lots of people like me, do the same from Spain. But please, don’t hype this, we don’t want them to block it Boxee style!

    Gonzalo Martín — 5:01 AM on May 5, 2009 Reply

  • Forget about Hulu (though I have Hotspot Shield installed to get around PBS.org’s equally stupid regional restrictions), how does a Canadian/North American get at that iPlayer sweetness?

    Warren Frey — 8:31 AM on May 5, 2009 Reply

  • Worked great for a day. Then it seems Hulu is on to the site. They now post a message saying I”m using an anonymous proxy tool and cannot access content. How sad.

    Pat — 10:51 PM on May 5, 2009 Reply

  • I just tried it and indeed it works, my address shows as a US one when the program is active. Hulu videos that refused to play now start OK, but you need to give it some time to buffer as the connection is obviously not as fast as a direct connection to the net.

    Tech-no-Media — 11:39 PM on May 5, 2009 Reply

  • its blocked now. no more hotspot shield on hulu. : (

    johan rundqvist — 2:31 AM on May 6, 2009 Reply

  • You spilled the beans, and now it’s blocked. Congratulations (not!)

    :-(

    metoo — 3:04 AM on May 6, 2009 Reply

  • It doesn’t work from Spain either. Well, thank you guys.

    Gonzalo Martín — 3:14 AM on May 6, 2009 Reply

  • I rent a VPN for £6.30 from UKiVPN that gives me access to UK, Canada and the US. I can access BBC, ITV, CH4, Hulu, Zattoo, etc. It actually works properly (no jerky feeds, no constant rebuferring). It uses the PC/Mac or iPhone’s native VPN client and streams without jerkiness or rebuferring. Even works over 3G if you have a decent signal.

    BritViewer — 12:02 PM on May 6, 2009 Reply

  • No, it didn’t last long, Jackie. Thanks to you, of course. You must be so proud.

    metoo — 1:40 AM on May 7, 2009 Reply

  • Are other VPN networks still working for Hulu, like Witopia or others?

    Join my protest group on Facebook!

    http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=9199&uid=187278780421#/group.php?gid=187278780421

    medusamorlock — 8:33 AM on May 7, 2009 Reply

  • I live in Canada and am able to access Hulu videos. Hotspot Shield has now switched most of their servers to White Plains, NY (instead of Englewood, Colorado). After deleting all cookies in the relevant browser, restart HSS to watch Hulu again. Proxy detection works mostly through downloaded cookies. Without them, non-US users can still view Hulu content. Read the entire method here.

    patricksoon — 11:21 PM on May 8, 2009 Reply

  • thnk y0u man

    m1o — 3:26 AM on May 17, 2009 Reply

  • hahahahah????????!!!!!!!! ^::^

    m1o — 3:28 AM on May 17, 2009 Reply

  • A lot of users experience problems with the free hotshield vpn. I’m one of those users, when I started my travels around asia I found very soon that I was very much addicted to my american tv shows.

    So I went and created my own VPN service so I could always make sure there was enough bandwidth to go around.

    The fee is small, to cover the cost of the servers and bandwidth at only 5$/month. You can go to http://www.hidemynet.com to get signed up today. Activation is instant, so if you found this posting looking for a way to watch hulu videos at this very second, you can.

    HideMyNet — 11:50 PM on May 22, 2009 Reply

  • Hulu does not work like that, it will still block you out

    al33 — 9:51 AM on June 22, 2009 Reply

  • I’ve been using the HotSpot Shield for a few months now to watch Hulu.

    However, just now (June 24 2009) Hulu has caught on to me and can ‘tell’ I’m using a proxy to view shows.

    BASTARDS WON’T LET ME IN!!

    I haven’t read all the posts above…….but I’m hoping someone has a fix for this…..

    purity — 4:56 PM on June 24, 2009 Reply

  • I don’t trust some of the comments here, they seem to come from either HotSpot oder ad companies… Fact is, HotSpot does NOT work for watching Hulu in Germany (July 09).

    Whoelleback — 1:20 AM on July 13, 2009 Reply

  • thanks jackass

    som — 7:28 AM on July 23, 2009 Reply

  • hotspot doesn’t work anymore
    hotspot doesn’t work anymore
    hotspot doesn’t work anymore
    hotspot doesn’t work anymore
    hotspot doesn’t work anymore
    hotspot doesn’t work anymore
    hotspot doesn’t work anymore
    hotspot doesn’t work anymore

    hope that gets the message across

    Johnny Dunk — 3:41 PM on July 28, 2009 Reply

  • Try using Hotspot Shield and Ultrasurf (both free) together. After deleting browser cache, cookies, and disabling ABP, Hotspot Shield provides ample bandwidth while Ultrasurf gives a different IP address which Hulu (for now) likes.

    For more info see this article on my blog:
    http://patricksoon.blogspot.com/2009/07/hulu-proxy-ban-workaround-2-combine.html

    Patrick — 8:22 PM on July 30, 2009 Reply

  • OK people, I have a good alternative.

    Why don’t you take a good book and read it?

    SirX — 1:05 PM on August 1, 2009 Reply

  • Hey everybody! Im Patrick, and I am obviously American. I like to tell other people off for trying to suck the great white milk that is American TV Shows. I don’t care that they want to watch it, as obviously I am american and don’t give a shit about other people. I think making sarcastic posts on blogs telling people to stop trying to watch MY AMERCAN videos is cool. Also, I am George Bush.

    Patrick, Proud American — 5:34 AM on August 4, 2009 Reply

  • this no longer works, the site detects the hot spot shield. any other way to make this work?

    brodie — 9:11 PM on August 31, 2009 Reply

  • Sacrebleu! Thanks to whoever opened their big mouths, I’ve been unable to check the progress of Conan O’Brien on the Tonight Show! Thanks. Retard.

    Serge, proud Frenchman — 2:25 AM on September 2, 2009 Reply

  • Hotspot stopped working, maybe because it’s free. Now I use https://12vpn.com to watch it here in China. Works fine.

    Grace — 10:37 PM on September 2, 2009 Reply

  • Another way is by using G-pass. This is also one great alternative to AOL browser. If you want to know more, I have posted some details on my blog.

    http://camphd.com/change-your-ip-address-to-us-ip-address.html

    deric — 3:33 PM on October 6, 2009 Reply

  • Another solution:
    Rent a VPS in US (Virtual Private Server) & build your own VPN for $20 a month (from linode etc..) but you need linux/unix knowledge to do the setup. or ask a linux geek friend that you trust (many of them already rent a vps for hobby). you might get it for free from him/her :o)

    solution dude — 1:27 PM on October 16, 2009 Reply

  • hulu works again with the new UKiVPN service.

    You can also buy individual UK or US access.

    CurveBall — 5:27 PM on October 16, 2009 Reply

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