American TV has a world wide following, and seeing that Canada’s culture and geographical location is so close to America, it makes sense that lots of American shows are popular in Canada, Stuff like Glee, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, CSI, and tons of other TV shows are aired on Canadian television and downloaded by Canadian Internet users every year. So it makes even more sense that Canadians would like to access Hulu in Canada. The problem here is that Hulu only broadcasts in America, to American IP addresses. Many American TV fans have discovered that there are certain ways to get a fake American IP address to watch Hulu in Canada. Here are some of the ways to do so – as well as their advantages and disadvantages.
Possibly the earliest solution to getting access to Hulu in Canada was Hotspot Shield. Since then, Hotspot Shield has been blocked by Hulu, but the idea lives on! One of the great things about Hotspot Shield was that it was free, fast, and reliable. However, it’s a proxy since then has been blocked by Hulu, along with other proxies. I have yet to see it for myself, but it is possible that Hulu cannot block ALL proxies. There are many nerd-types working on this problem as you read this article, so it is perfectly reasonable to think that someone out there has made a proxy that Hulu can’t detect. However, this is going to take time and effort on your part to find them – kind of a pain in the a** just to get American TV in Canada.
So most people who are serious about accessing Hulu in Canada are using a VPN. This basically splits into two schools of though – free and paid.
Free VPN’s are also a pain, but you’ve still got a better chance of finding a free VPN that works than a free proxy that works (though there are more free proxies available, like HideMyAss) Free VPN’s also present their own set of problems. Many times the free versions, as you would expect, are lame versions of the paid stuff and are just there to get you to buy the paid one. This means that streaming video off of a PPTP VPN with restricted bandwidth is going to be difficult and time consuming. Even if you can find a decent VPN that will allow you to seamlessly stream video, people aren’t just going to give that stuff away – there’s no such thing as a free lunch right? Some services require that you blog about the VPN services however many time, or post a banner on a site with decent Google page rank. This, in most cases in inconvenient.
This is why I think that getting a paid VPN is the best way to get access to Hulu in Canada. Although this means that you’ve got to pay another fee, on top of the Hulu Plus fee (who really wants the seriously weak free version of Hulu anyway), it does mean that you get unlimited bandwidth, server switching (meaning you can watch BBC iPlayer with a server in The UK), an fast VPN for seamless streaming, and a super secure connection that won’t drop between video or tip Hulu off to your real Canadian IP address. For anyone who is serious about accessing Hulu in Canada, a quality VPN is really the only practical solution.
