Which VPN services allow you to stream US services like Hulu, Netflix, etc, while abroad.
I’ve had good results with Windscribe, and they’re on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windscribe/
Make sure you get a good router and install the VPN there. I just switched over to https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-GT-AC2900-Dual-Band-Wireless-Gigabit/dp/B07VPL5WP3 (ugh, missed the sale) which lets you specify which devices to route through the VPN, which my older router wasn’t able to do. Not sure if that’s a common feature, but it’s handy for us.
I use nord. And most of the time they have some kind of a deal for a very cheap 2-3 year subscription. Also I’m pretty sure one of my credit cards gives me extra points for them.
ExpressVPN is the bees knees. They typically have a special for like 15 months for $100 for new subscribers. Just a heads up, their unblocking for Netflix is horrible. I typically couldn’t stream US content except on a few servers and only after I’d reconnect a few times. They know this is an issue and haven’t fixed it over a year.
I highly recommend a VPN enabled router to pair with the VPN. You can preload up to 5 servers directly on it and change at will with an app so all devices in your home address connected to that server.
It may vary by country. I served in an authoritarian country, and we needed to have multiple (paid) VPNs, as any one might not work at a time. Popular ones included Astrill, Express, Strong, and Nord. We always assumed our internet traffic was surveilled, VPN or not.
You may call me crazy, but I use an iPhone hotspot with an AT&T international day pass plan and then connect an Xbox to it via WiFi. Cost is an extra $100/month on top of the regular cellphone bill ($50/month more for each add’l user). Not having to deal with the local ISPs or VPNs, keeping my US phone number of 20+ years, and having Sling/Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, HBOMax, XboxLive all work seamlessly is pretty close to priceless.
Word of warning about ExpressVPN. It has been linked to Chinese ownership now I believe, and any USG employee should be wary of using their service. Unless you’re really only using it for streaming (not personal banking, finances, etc) something like Nord or Strong would be better options.
Fwiw we started with the VPN on the router and it throttled our speed. Using it on the specific devices lead to no noticeable speed degradation. (We use Nord; had some Netflix issues last year but they were short lived and then it was fine again).
All of them. I use ExpressVPN. You don’t need a VPN for Netfix, though.
I use Nord and have had varying luck with different streaming services. One thing I have found is that it seems helpful to log into a server where your billing address (hopefully that’s in the US) is. Netflix seems to work great but Hulu is generally blocked.
Lots of good suggestions here but I’ll add that it might depend on the country. There are a handful that are pretty restrictive on VPNs (and will actively block them if they are detected), you might need multiple services in that instance.
Also, you don’t always need a US IP address to stream, it depends on the country and service. I was surprised to learn that HBOMax and Disney+ are both available here and work just fine without a VPN. Netflix is available almost everywhere and sometimes the local catalog is better than the US catalog.
I use Windscribe too. I don’t have it installed at the router level, but may look into it. I liked that it had plenty of different servers in case one started to get blocked. I also liked that it had unlimited devices. By the time you add up phones, computers, tablets, and televisions for four people, the number of devices you want connected starts to exceed what some others offer as part of their normal packages.
Lemme guess: IRM specialist?
I went this route (I’m not a Linux expert but pivpn made it way easier), only issue is it can be a major pain to find someone to host the damn thing. I think I tried 3 or 4 different family members and they either didn’t have enough upload bandwidth, had a locked-down ISP router that made port forwarding impossible (looking at you Xfinity), or they were in the process of moving themselves. I finally got it working at my parent’s house but it’s flaky at best so guess I’m still stuck with Nord/Express for the immediate future.
I keep thinking this would be a great side hustle for someone in the US who has some IT skills and a fast enough home connection to host a few pis, I’m sure there’s plenty of FSOs would be happy to pay a little money to utilize some unused bandwidth.
Nord is notoriously bad. Hunt around on Reddit for many examples. Follow the money on ownership. ExpressVPN is similar. Kape Technologies is highly suspect. I do use Express but only for streaming on a dedicated VLAN connected to my streaming devices.
This has been a big problem for me, any recs for an alternative that can actually handle Netflix?
ExpressVPN has worked really well for me across multiple positions. I tried ProtonVPN a few months back and it was crap.
I still have an ExpressVPN account and haven’t noticed that, but maybe that’s just me. At least upshot with Netflix is that it’s available in a ton of countries (unlike Hulu or Amazon Prime). Not to mention local Netflix sometimes has a better catalog than its US counterpart.
When you install a VPN at the router level, can you choose for some devices to be connected to the VPN and others not? For example, I want to watch local Netflix but my kids want to watch Hulu.