OK, we’re in Germany. After having a nice dinner, the evening that we got here, we went back to the hotel to relax and watch TV a bit (pretty bushed after the flight.) Since everything but CNN on TV was in German, we decided we’d simply watch a movie on the iPad or some TV shows on the iPad.
Netlix: will not allow me to watch in this area (Germany, so I assume rule is outside of U.S.)
Amazon Prime: Let’s me browse, but everything I choose to watch, same general rule as above.
Crackle: won’t start, says not available in your area.
DishOnline: It actually almost works. I love that I can watch my Dish receiver at home, both live shows and what’s recorded on my DVR, via the Sling Dish gave me for free. But the bandwidth issue from Iowa to Germany seems to be a killer.
Is there any app that I can install on my iPad or PC that will let me watch TV shows or movies over here? I am afraid running through a proxy may use up even more of the average at best bandwidth in the room.
Probably NFL Game Pass or MLB.TV would work. I’ve never tried them outside the UK, though.
Pretty much any streaming episodic TV or movie service isn’t going to work though for licensing reasons. You need to download stuff onto your device if you want to watch it abroad. Or sign up to a service in that country, of course.
Oh yeah, having said that, a Slingbox should work, bandwidth permitting. Or if you have anything that lets you watch TV on your PC you could use something like Splashtop to remotely watch it.
Yeah, paid high bandwidth VPN or use some sort of intermediary streaming service. I suspect (but don’t know) that I could use my Subsonic to stream some US-only services I have legitimate access to back home, but I don’t know that for sure.
Any reason why Chrome, when I go to download an extension (in this case the windows media player for Chrome plug-in) while in Germany it gives me the Firefox add-on??
Why would connecting to a proxy in the US use up more bandwidth? I mean, sure, a little bit of overhead, maybe, but I would expect it would be negligible compared to the media stream data itself.
You are correct, not bandwidth, just laggier due to higher pings, so to speak.
I tried hotspot shield, and it worked. At least with Netflix. So that’s cool.
Also, Dishonline seems to be working now, and I can watch anything off my Dish IRD at home - live TV and things on the DVR. Pretty low res, occasional pauses, but the bandwidth of the wireless in the hotel is not great. Appears to work OK sometimes not at all others, probably depending on how many people are using the internet in the hotel.
Still not sure why downloading a plug-in for Chrome while here is giving me a firefox plug-in - did it on my wife’s computer too,
Unblock-us is very good for getting US internet services if you’re abroad. It has a trial, but the service only costs 50 bucks a year. It’s a DSN redirector, so it uses your full internet speed.
