Hulu from outside the US

June 2, 2009

Don’t you live in the US? Would you like to watch hulu, abc, and other US TV shows online?

Well, every time more, more websites are IP based, so if your IP does not fall under a specific country, you cannot access the content.

You could solve this by going to the preferences of your browser and using a proxy in the country where you want to access the specific content. You can find proxy IP googleing it as “open proxy”. The problem is that in the case of hulu the flash script used in the browser does not tunnel to the proxy that you specify. They are more clever πŸ˜‰ but less clever than us.

How to fix it?

Not that easy I have to tell. Regular users won’t be able to do it, but if you are a technofreak then keep reading:

In the case of hulu and other tv’s you will have to tunnel everything through ssh to a server in the country where the content is, in this case the US, and use socks5.

Because of the use of flash we will have to put all in a box to listen to all the connections and then rute them with socks5 via ssh2 to the server in the US. You will need to have a server in the US, a VPS (Virtual Private Server). The cheapest that I found isΒ http://swvps.com/, it costs around $10 per month, but there are many others, like slicehost, etc….

If you are a webmaster or somebody who creates websites for you clientes I bet you can have access to a VPS in the US.

Fist you contract the service, then you install an OS, I recommend Ubuntu server, and then you will have to install openssh with apt-get install. Socks5 comes with it. Of course if you buy a slice or a VPS you will have to secure it, then you can install whatever you need to be running in this VPS (apache, php, mysql, etc) but for the purpose of watching Hulu and similars, ssh is enaugh.

Once you have the server running, then you connect to it with putty (from windows) or a terminal in linux or mac with

ssh -D proxyport name@machine -p port

For example “sudo ssh -D 8989 user@machine -p 1234”

-p port is in case you are not using standard port for your ssh (that I recommend)

To put all the connections in a box you will need to install proxifier in mac (or PC), which is not free, or if you have a ubuntu then (free, sure)

sudo apt-get install tsocks

Then you will have to configure your tsocks or proxifier to use socks5 in port 8989 for example, while having your ssh connection open with your VPS.

Then just open your browser and enjoy the shows. Proxifier will catch up all and tunnel it to your VPS in the US so you will be able to watch the shows πŸ˜‰

1 comment

  1. Pingback: me, my vps and the beeb « polymorphiq

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