How can I watch Hulu outside U.S. for free?
January 19, 2010 7:56 AM   Subscribe

How can I watch Hulu outside U.S. for free (from India)?

Hulu.com has some really great videos bust since I live in India I cannot access them, as its supposed to be U.S. only. I have tried Hotspot Shield and that doesn't work anymore.

I have Windows 7 O.S., use Firefox as my primary browser and require a solution that is free. Infact I don't need to stream the videos essentially; so if there's a solution for downloading the clip by specifying the video's url that would do too.
posted by libbrichus to Computers & Internet (7 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you're able to buy a VPN service that will give you a US IP address that might work.
posted by gadha at 8:07 AM on January 19, 2010


Try http://www.fastpasstv.com
posted by madman at 8:14 AM on January 19, 2010


When I was living outside the US I just downloaded TV shows that I wanted to watch, its not like they were going to com over to China and sue me.

Or did I...
posted by BobbyDigital at 8:25 AM on January 19, 2010 [2 favorites]


I believe Tor can be used for this. Tor's main purpose is to act as an anonymous proxy for internet requests, basically instead of going to the website directly you go to a Tor Proxy which requests the web content and returns it to you, hiding the actual server you are hitting. This means the IP that actually hits the webserver (hulu) will be that of the Tor proxy. You can set where you want that Tor Proxy to exist - so in the US which should allow you to watch US only content.

Note there is a performance hit on this so your quality may suffer.
posted by bitdamaged at 11:38 AM on January 19, 2010 [1 favorite]


Oh and Tor can be used as a plugin in firefox - using that makes this much simpler
posted by bitdamaged at 11:38 AM on January 19, 2010


I don't think this is what Tor is designed for, and it is considered very bad form to stream large amounts of data through onion routers that are run by volunteers who have to foot the bandwidth bill.

You can try purchasing VPN service to get around that, but you have to realize that Hulu is very quick at closing loopholes like this. Hotspot Shield no longer works, and with WiTopia, another popular VPN service, I think only their LA server can be used to access Hulu.
posted by reformedjerk at 2:22 PM on January 19, 2010


Response by poster: None of the above work for me because:

1) I do download full shows through other ways. I need Hulu for random pop-culture clips that can't be found elsewhere.

2) I don't want to use Tor because that would be abuse of their excellent service and moreover it would be painfully slow.

3) I don't want to pay for VPN because I don't have any other use for it and I am still hoping there must be a hack to watch Hulu from outside U.S. that works.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Anybody have some more that might work?
posted by libbrichus at 6:44 PM on January 19, 2010


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