HGTV Canada in the US

January 2, 2012 4:05 PM

How can I watch HGTV Canada in the US?

(Ms. Vegetable)
I want to watch HGTV Canada's "Consumed." I get a note that says the show is not available in my country when I use their main website/episodes viewing. Youtube only has short clips of previews. It's not on Netflix yet.

How/where can I watch this?

If that really fails, my main reason for wanting to watching the show is to find out _exactly_ what is in the list of "essentials" the people on the show are allowed to keep.

posted by a robot made out of meat to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

I love Consumed! I don't know how you can watch it, but I watch it online here in Canada as well as when it's on TV. It seems to work at "fixing" cluttered homes better than shows of the Hoarder ilk do. My favourite moments are when family members walk around the house after it's empty with their arms windmilling, because they can.

I will happily take a quick look at them and give you a better breakdown by episode, but I can't do it until after ten (EST) tonight (you know, because of the kid's bedtime and then the Hoarders season premier at 9...). The segments follow a particular format for each increment between commercial breaks, so I can skip to those parts of the 13 episodes and freeze the frame to see.

I can tell you offhand that the "essentials" people are allowed to keep are one small suitcase of clothing (we never see what goes in there, really, and I don't recall mentions of grooming products or makeup); and shown on a table are a fork, knife, spoon, cup, plate and bowl and a few pots and pans. The amount of food in the house is never addressed. Other small items shown on the table with the utensils varies from family to family, if I recall correctly.

Then each family is allowed to choose ten things collectively beyond that. TV is never considered an essential. Depending on the family's personal issues, handheld devices and computers may or may not be allowed/considered. With kids, sometimes more toys are allowed per child, as long as they fit in a contained space. Sometimes devices like flatirons and blow dryers are considered when choosing the ten things they're allowed to keep, other times it doesn't seem to be an issue - it seems to depend on how the family members are characterized, and whether their habits interfere with the quality of life in the home.

Otherwise, from family to family what is left in the house beyond the removal of all the clutter and furniture to a storage space beyond what is labelled "essential" changes - some even seem to have more furniture and wall decoration like art and pictures taken away than others.

If you have any other questions, let me know and I will happily take a peek later.
posted by peagood at 5:26 PM on January 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

You could try the workaround described here: http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/8zjv7/instructions_on_how_to_watch_thedailyshowcom/ which lets Canadians watch US Comedy Central - but in reverse. Use a Canadian IP address (eg 159.33.3.85 which is cbc.ca) as the X-Forwarded-For value. I'm not 100% sure that will work for HGTV, but the X-Forwarded-For hack works for any US network I've tried (although not more picky sites like Hulu).
posted by Gortuk at 7:01 AM on January 3, 2012

There are several VPN services that would allow you to do this. Witopia, for instance, has servers in Vancouver and Toronto.
posted by brianogilvie at 8:08 AM on January 3, 2012