How to watch US streamable TV content in Canada

[bouche]

I have been searching for the best way to get around content control (Thanks CRTC!) in Canada. Sites like HULU stream full episodes shortly after airing, for free but in Canada, we are controlled and cannot view this content even though we pay for the content through cable and satellite providers. UNFAIR!

They know we are requesting the content from canada just by our connection to our canadian ISP. The only way around this is to hide our identity from the servers using a proxy service.

Anyway, this is the first app that I have found to do the job easily and for free.

http://www.hotspotshield.com/launch/

My PVR misses the end of some episodes that run right into the next show (like heros for example) so I was able to get the ending of the last episode using this proxy.

enjoy freeing yourself from the prison of content control.

[bouche]

oh yeah...one more thing. The only way to watch the online premier of Flight of the Conchords is to use the hotspotshield.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c48f423bdf/season-2-online-premiere-flight-of-the-conchords-from-flight-of-the-conchords

I love this show!

[Hartamophone]

Thanks, Bouche. It never ceases to annoy me, seeing that black screen with "We're sorry, this content is not available in Canada."

[boiler]

cool, thanks.

[mattm]

Where do you guys see that black screen? Is it just satellite? (I've never seen it with rogers, and we have a lot of channels)

[bouche]

Where do you guys see that black screen? Is it just satellite? (I've never seen it with rogers, and we have a lot of channels)

just online streaming. this doesn't have anything to do with your cable provider.

[mattm]

ahhh, gotcha. So you're telling me that the CRTC is actually censoring the internet? Something tells me that's not such a good thing. I don't watch regular tv shows, didn't have a clue. It's not right.

If you don't want to use the program bouche posted above, just do a search in google for proxy list, there's a couple sites that maintain pretty good ones. That's what I did during the canadian demonoid hiatus, proxy.

[bouche]

Hulu and the Great Wall of U.S. Media

Mathew Ingram, October 29, 2007 at 12:16 PM EDT

After months of speculation, a new video-sharing joint venture from NBC and News Corp. has finally emerged. It's called Hulu, and it's a portal of sorts that contains clips and full episodes of TV shows such as Heroes and The Bionic Woman -- they can be watched online from the site, or the clips can be easily embedded in webpages and MySpace sites. Although it hasn't actually launched yet (that comes in a couple of months), some of the content from Hulu has already shown up on the AOL website.

I would give you the URL, but there wouldn't be much point, or at least not for non-U.S. readers. That's because if you have the misfortune to be living outside the continental United States, the Hulu content will be unavailable to you. You will see the page with clickable video clips, but when you click on one it will say "this content is unavailable in your region" or something to that effect. Like many other U.S. sites, Hulu is using IP blocking, which bars any non-U.S. Internet address from accessing its content.

I wrote about this phenomenon recently with respect to The Daily Show, after Viacom's Comedy Central put up a site with thousands of clips and previous episodes of the show. Canadians got the same message from that site -- or at least they did for a few hours, after which any Canadian traffic was automatically redirected to the (Canadian) Comedy Network site (while you can watch some recent episodes of The Daily Show there, however, you don't get anything like the 16,000 clips that are available at the Comedy Central site).

The arrival of Hulu is likely to amplify the frustration that many Canadian Web surfers feel when they run into the Great Wall of U.S. Media. So you missed that last episode of My Name Is Earl? If you're in the U.S., you can go to the NBC site and watch it streaming, or you can even download it from iTunes. If you are in Canada, however, you have to find someone who recorded it, or you have to download it illegally (although the technically savvy can also make use of what are called "anonymous proxies", which disguise your IP address).

The ironic thing, of course, is that the vast majority of Canadian TV programming is made up of U.S. content. Having developed a taste for Chuck or Family Guy or some other show, you can't watch it from the website of the network that originally created it. Or at least most of the time you can't. In some cases -- including Heroes -- you can watch streaming episodes from a website (in the case of Heroes it's Global TV's site), but then other shows such as My Name Is Earl are unavailable.

This phenomenon is a function of the licensing deals that Canadian networks have struck with the U.S. networks they get their content from, and also a function of the way the Canadian TV industry is structured and regulated by the CRTC. When all of that collides with the free-for-all nature of the Internet, however, the reality is that Canadian viewers can wind up feeling like a kid in a candy store: They can see all the wonderful things that are on display, but they can't have any of them.

[Big Wooly Mammoth]

ahhh, gotcha. So you're telling me that the CRTC is actually censoring the internet? Something tells me that's not such a good thing. I don't watch regular tv shows, didn't have a clue. It's not right.

The CRTC isn't doing the censoring. It's the actual providers of the programmes. And it's due to licensing issues. i.e. they sell the license to a Canaadian network to broadcast the show in Canada and the internet rights go with that. So, it's up to the Canadian rights holder to make the programmes available on their sites if they choose to do so.I have run into the same issue in the world of music. there is stuff that is downloadable in the UK and in the US that we can't download here. check out Amazon's US and UK sites, for example. They offer MP3 downloads w can't get in Canada. It's the same thing with Emusic (which is a great service by the way).

[mattm]

Man, I had no idea about that. I did some research and found exactly what you'd put up there wooly. I find it disapointing. Not as bad as censorship but still sucks that we can't see it here, especially when there are things like proxies to get around that very easily, renders it kinda pointless (although, there are most likely many people that won't figure out proxies, all it takes is one google search for something like can't see x show in canada to find the answer)

[boiler]

cool, HULU is awesome

[mattm]

If the program bouche mentioned stops working or doesn't work as well as intended, a harder but doable fall back is:

http://www.publicproxyservers.com/page1.html

You have to configure your browser proxy manually and the proxies listed are sometimes slow or sometimes just shut down but after trying a few you can usually get one that works for a while with great speeds. Also, the list is not restricted to the us (so if you want to get something from say the UK that's not available here, find a UK proxy and use that...).

I'd still recommend bouche's program, though, unless your ISP is capping encrypted stuff.

Just to mention again, the manual proxy approach is frustrating if on that day none of the proxies are working so be warned, it's a last case scenario type thing (currently I can't get any of the US proxies on there to work and there are only 4 of them or so...)

Edited December 22, 2008 by Guest

[mattm]

cool, HULU is awesome

PS: OS=linux, not supported by hotspotshield

[CyberHippie]

Another free option for tv I just heard about... Apparently digital and even some HD channels are being broadcast over the air. You can get more modern rabbit ears antennas that actually tune in these digital and HD signals, for like $30. Apparently it's actually better quality than some of the satellites and cable boxes. Seriously. Some people in Toronto are getting 30+ channels.

Do a search for "over the air tv".

I'm definitely going to get a new antenna and try it out. Internet is still superior but it's nice to know there is a live version available for when you blow your monthly ISP download cap.

[Kanada Kev]

That's the way i'm going to do it when i get an HDTV. My uncle did it and got all the US networks, plus a lot more. Proximity to the US border really helps though.

It's a digital broadcast. You'll either get perfect reception, or non at all. None of those "snowy" screens Your TV needs to have an ATSC tuner built in (standard now, but not on the first generations).

[CyberHippie]

Yeah, exactly it's in or out, no snow. I like the sounds of that... I guess I gotta get a set top box that does the ATSC tuner... Actually maybe I could do that on a computer with a tv card. Since I use my computer as source for all my media anyway.

[mattm]

With rabbit ears here in ottawa I was able to get a couple channels but not too many.

The us has implemented regulation that very shortly all channels must broadcast in HD. Canada has also decided this but has not set a date for it yet. If you're close to the border, you're good to go but not quite here yet.

Another trick, though, is that if you do have the atsc or whatever tuner and basic cable you can do a scan on the channels and it will find tmn movies on demand channels and you can watch them. The only problem is that if the people decide to pause/rewind/etc, you have to watch that too but I was able to get a couple free movies in full before just paying for the cable straight out.

[bouche]

OTA is interesting, but there isn't much available for most people.

[ollie]

Put down the collective bong.

[AD]

The us has implemented regulation that very shortly all channels must broadcast in HD.

February 17 all US TV is going digital, but i didn't hear anything about HD being mandated. If so, it must be in addition to 'standard definition.'

[bouche]

FYI, you can watch the episode of Flight of the Conchords on www.hbocanada.com

Season 2 premiere is streaming now. It's just great.