VPN?

jamos316 · Jul 3, 2014

At the moment I am using HideMyAss VPN to access a UK VPN server from my home country (Sweden) to access VOD sites like 4OD,BBC,ITV & SKY. I also access a few sites that are only for the US and a site that is only for use in India.

I have tried smartDNS providers such as Unotelly, Overplay & Trickbyte. There was random buffering & lagging when watching VOD services. After alot of technical support I was told that my ISP may be interrupting the speed outside of your home country thus smartDNS will not work good for me, VPN will hide me from my ISP. So far the HideMyAss VPN has been better than a smartDNS only experienced buffering on very few occasions.

I have learnt that streaming is not perfect anyway so even people that stream from the UK will sometimes experience buffering problems.

Can I have advice on this matter, what is the best solution for me to stream HD TV from another country. Is it VPN or is there another way (except for SmartDNS)? If VPN is the best way is HideMyAss the best?

Thanks for any comments in advanced

Kari · Jul 4, 2014

Hallå Jamos, trevlig att treffa andra Skandinaver här!

I have quite a lot of experience in using various VOD services over a VPN connection, using various VPN clients and services. I watch for instance your Swedish PBS broadcaster's SVT Play daily from here in Germany, as well as TV from my native Finland, from Norway and BBC iPlay, Hulu at least weekly and so on.

It all comes down to the client you are using. I have lived most of my adult life abroad and tested a great number of services, until a year or so ago I found the most perfect tool, CyberGhost Premium. Comparing it with HideMyAss is like to compare a fighter jet and old Cessna, CyberGhost is superior in so many ways (believe it or not, I'm just a happy user, they don't pay me for saying this

).

See here: This laptop I am using now has a limited bandwidth, I allow it to use maximum 50% of my 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, so this machine should not exceed 50 down and 10 up. Now let's connect to Sweden:

Testing the speed, you can see the server is in Sweden because that's where CyberGhost put me now:

And SVT Play runs smoothly in best possible quality:

Changing the simulated country for instance to UK, I get the same speed and iPlay runs smoothly.

My recommendation is to replace HideMyAss with CyberGhost Premium. their free service is often good enough but to assure you get the best of it, it really is worth to pay for Premium.

Kari

jamos316 · Jul 4, 2014

Kari said:
Hallå Jamos, trevlig att treffa andra Skandinaver här!

I have quite a lot of experience in using various VOD services over a VPN connection, using various VPN clients and services. I watch for instance your Swedish PBS broadcaster's SVT Play daily from here in Germany, as well as TV from my native Finland, from Norway and BBC iPlay, Hulu at least weekly and so on.

It all comes down to the client you are using. I have lived most of my adult life abroad and tested a great number of services, until a year or so ago I found the most perfect tool, CyberGhost Premium. Comparing it with HideMyAss is like to compare a fighter jet and old Cessna, CyberGhost is superior in so many ways (believe it or not, I'm just a happy user, they don't pay me for saying this ).

See here: This laptop I am using now has a limited bandwidth, I allow it to use maximum 50% of my 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, so this machine should not exceed 50 down and 10 up. Now let's connect to Sweden:

View attachment 46306

Testing the speed, you can see the server is in Sweden because that's where CyberGhost put me now:

View attachment 46307

And SVT Play runs smoothly in best possible quality:

View attachment 46305

Changing the simulated country for instance to UK, I get the same speed and iPlay runs smoothly.

My recommendation is to replace HideMyAss with CyberGhost Premium. their free service is often good enough but to assure you get the best of it, it really is worth to pay for Premium.

Kari

Tack för din svara!

After looking at a CyberGhost I can't help thinking that the others that I am considering are not only cheaper but have better performance/speeds which in turn then can lead to better streaming performance.
These are ;TigerVPN, BeeVPN, boxPN & Astrill VPN.
I am particularly interested in Astrill VPN as it has a feature that acts as a video accelerator & web cache.
'Video Accelerator & Web Cache
With our incredible Video Accelerator you can watch high-definition videos from YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, BBC iPlayer and many others at incredible streaming speed.
Combined with the WebCache feature, Astrill becomes the fastest VPN on the market. Say bye bye to long waiting times and annoying buffering'.
They have a risk free weeks trial so I might try that out 1st.

James

Kari · Jul 4, 2014

I have tried all those you mentioned except BeeVPN, not one comes close to CyberGhost. It's your choice, of course, but if smooth VDO from different countries is your main goal, my vote goes to CyberGhost.

About the prices, CyberGhost Premium for one PC for a year costs 40 USD (€30 or SEK275), whereas Astrill VPN costs 70 USD (€51 or SEK480) a year.

jamos316 · Jul 4, 2014

Kari said:
I have tried all those you mentioned except BeeVPN, not one comes close to CyberGhost. It's your choice, of course, but if smooth VDO from different countries is your main goal, my vote goes to CyberGhost.

About the prices, CyberGhost Premium for one PC for a year costs 40 USD (€30 or SEK275), whereas Astrill VPN costs 70 USD (€51 or SEK480) a year.

Ok Kari, good to know.

Can I ask you if you tried streaming from channel 4's 4OD?
After some buffering problems with mainly this site only I got the response from one of the technical support teams I emailed that 4OD uses technology different from the rest. Basically he told me that if you stream from 4OD it is not direct from computer to their server it travels to a lot of computers before it reaches the end point. This explains why there are so many people complaining about buffering problems with 4OD even if they are based in the UK. If it's true of course...

Kari · Jul 4, 2014

Channel 4 in which country? I can try now if I know the country.

jamos316 · Jul 4, 2014

Kari said:
Channel 4 in which country? I can try now if I know the country.

UK. Channel 4 4OD

Kari · Jul 4, 2014

A bit strange: I tested now, I had absolutely no issues watching everything possible from UK 4OD, except when trying any episode of 2 Broke Girls I got "Error, not available in this region". All other shows run OK and smoothly:

With BBC iPlayer and ITV Player I have never had any issues.

A tip: do you know the FilmOn service, available also as Windows 8 App? It's free to watch Live UK TV (all over the air channels), with subscription you get online DVR.

Kari

jamos316 · Jul 4, 2014

Kari said:
A bit strange: I tested now, I had absolutely no issues watching everything possible from UK 4OD, except when trying any episode of 2 Broke Girls I got "Error, not available in this region". All other shows run OK and smoothly:

View attachment 46312

With BBC iPlayer and ITV Player I have never had any issues.

A tip: do you know the FilmOn service, available also as Windows 8 App? It's free to watch Live UK TV (all over the air channels), with subscription you get online DVR.

Kari

Great. Thanks for testing it.

One more question. What is your original connection speed?

David Bailey · Jul 4, 2014

I was interested in this so I tried 4od & used postal code SW1A 0PW to access it.
I picked it at random.

Needless to say it is not my US code--- 22801
It seems the address is not needed.
Just the postal code.
I can now watch 4od media without a VPN connection.

I suppose any of the following would work too---

jamos316 · Jul 4, 2014

David Bailey said:
I was interested in this so I tried 4od & used postal code SW1A 0PW to access it.
I picked it at random.

Needless to say it is not my US code--- 22801
It seems the address is not needed.
Just the postal code.
I can now watch 4od media without a VPN connection.

View attachment 46313

I suppose any of the following would work too---

View attachment 46315

Interesting....how can you add a different postcode than your own, I have never been asked for a postcode with 4OD but I have with ITV

David Bailey · Jul 4, 2014

jamos316 said:
David Bailey said:

I was interested in this so I tried 4od & used postal code SW1A 0PW to access it.
I picked it at random.

Needless to say it is not my US code--- 22801
It seems the address is not needed.
Just the postal code.
I can now watch 4od media without a VPN connection.

View attachment 46313

I suppose any of the following would work too---

View attachment 46315

Click to expand...

Interesting....how can you add a different postcode than your own, I have never been asked for a postcode with 4OD but I have with ITV

Like this when you register---

Kari · Jul 4, 2014

David, could you please test the show 2 Broke Girls, you'll find it on homepage. I can watch nothing from 4OD without VPN, with VPN everything else but not that one show.

Interesting that you could watch 4OD without VPN. What about the BBC iPlayer, do you get it also without VPN?

Jamos, I have a 100/20 Mbps line but all computers limited to use maximum 50/10.

Speedtest just now using my real IP and location:

And using CyberGhost Premium with UK as the simulated country (notice that CyberGhost does not care about my bandwidth limitations

):

Finally using CyberGhost Free:

As you can see even the PING is acceptable.

Kari

jamos316 · Jul 4, 2014

how can you get a faster speed in London than your original speed?

David Bailey · Jul 4, 2014

Kari said:
David, could you please test the show 2 Broke Girls, you'll find it on homepage. I can watch nothing from 4OD without VPN, with VPN everything else but not that one show.

Interesting that you could watch 4OD without VPN. What about the BBC iPlayer, do you get it also without VPN?

Jamos, I have a 100/20 Mbps line but all computers limited to use maximum 50/10.

Speedtest just now using my real IP and location:

View attachment 46318

And using CyberGhost Premium with UK as the simulated country (notice that CyberGhost does not care about my bandwidth limitations ):

View attachment 46319

Finally using CyberGhost Free:

View attachment 46320

As you can see even the PING is acceptable.

Kari

Can't get 2 broke girls.
Can get BBC iplayer.

Kari · Jul 4, 2014

jamos316 said:
how can you get a faster speed in London than your original speed?

It's not faster than my connection; I have 100/20 Mbps connection, I have just limited the bandwidth each of my computers can use to 50/10. It seems that CyberGhost does not "obey" this limitation but instead bypasses it, I get often speeds up to 90 Mbps when using CyberGhost even though when no VPN is used it stays just under my set limit.

David Bailey said:
Can't get 2 broke girls.
Can get BBC iplayer.

Thanks David.

Very interesting you also get iPlayer without VPN. Could it be that UK broadcasters have rights for USA, too? Whatever channel, player and broadcaster I try without VPN gives this kind of message:

That 2 Broke Girls is interesting, can't understand why I can watch everything else using VPN but not that?

jamos316 · Jul 5, 2014

i have just tried to access 4OD by just registering a UK postcode as David said and it does work however I get buffering problems. BBC works also.

Wonder if anyone has tried overplays VPN service, a bit pricey but looks good. also there is one called pure vpn which looks good.

Also has anybody tried SmartDNS providers to unblock streaming sites? In my experience they did not work as gotrandom buffering problems

VPN?

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