WTF: Come on, Hulu/Netflix/ABC/NBC/Sling/whoever, let us watch American TV outside of the country

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Biggs is the editor of TechCrunch Gadgets. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at john@techcrunch.com. → Learn More

A quick rant. I’m in Geneva, the city where boredom goes to be bored, and wanted to watch a movie on Netflix Instant Play. I headed over and discovered, much to my chagrin, that the system was keyed to my current location and, as a result, I’m locked out. While I’m aware of IP masks and other tricks I could use to get to the content, I’m essentially browsing Usenet now simply because I don’t want to go through the trouble.

Seeding content internationally is a the magic of globalization. Just because someone is sending said content over a satellite doesn’t mean everyone in the free world has satellite TV. Show Heroes to people in Switzerland. While they probably won’t understand it – they’re very literal-minded – I’m sure they’ll enjoy the colors.

As a public service to others, go and download Hotspot Shield and restart your browser. That’s all you need to get video overseas. As for me, I’m stuck downloading and, interestingly enough I’ve found a wonderful German film called “Church of Fudge” which is starting out swimmingly with a priest and a nun discussing something in Deutsch. Oh. Oh my god. Oh no.

Sponsored Ads

blog comments powered by Disqus

Sponsored Ads

Sponsored Ads