I’m off on my travels for 6 months at the end of the month & want to take advantage of a Netflix account and watch a load of series that I’ve not otherwise had the opportunity to. However, Netflix doesn’t have a service in Africa so the advice they’ve given me is to set my DNS proxy, or something, so that it appears I’m in the UK so I can access the content.

A quick Google search reveals guides to changing the settings for specific devices and one or two websites that appear to be some sort of pay service to give you the appearance your computer’s in the UK (UnblockUs, Overplay – about $5 a month).

I’m a bit of a technophobe and don’t want to start fiddling too much with something I’m not sure about. Any of the more tech-savvy types on here give me a walkthrough/talkthrough in layman’s terms of how to set up my computer so that I can access UK content from Kenya? Failing that, is it worth forking out 5 bucks a month for something like UnblockUs?

Ta!

I don’t know about free options, but I use Unotelly very successfully. It takes a bit of fiddling to set up, but once it’s set you don’t have to change it again – and the site has step by step instructions to guide you through.

I tried UnblockUS – I forget why, but I quickly ditched it in favour of Unotelly

Have you checked if you can get broadband fast enough & cheap enough to stream stuff where you’re staying in Kenya? If not, you could fill a USB drive with DVDs (using eg handbrake) before you go.

Have you checked if you can get broadband fast enough & cheap enough to stream stuff where you’re staying in Kenya? If not, you could fill a USB drive with DVDs (using eg handbrake) before you go.

Should be OK – I’ll be in Nairobi and have checked with the bloke I’m taking over from. Had thought about the download option but then it’s having to go to great expense to buy the DVDs/boxsets in the first place, followed by the time to transfer from disc to disc when a Netflix account (or similar) is around £6 a month and can stream straight from the net…

I use smartdns from openplay. It tricks netflix into believing you are in the UK (or elsewhere) without routing everything through a VPN which can restrict bandwidth. Also works for iplayer and itvlive. It costs about 5€ a month.

As talked about here http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/best-films-on-netflix
Download Chrome and get a plugin called Hola. All good and above board.
More information here too https://hola.org/ but you need Chrome for the website to work properly.

We’ve used ExPatShield in the past. It works well but you get random browser tabs popping up with (tech) videos playing. It doesn’t work in Windows8 though.
I tried using Hola (and AdTelly) as Chrome extensions but as I use Google Chrome at work as well as home (and I log in to Google) they popped up everywhere which I found to be a PITA. It’s not too hard to disable them when you don’t need them though..

Thanks for the info folks. Bit of an update from the bloke I’m replacing though, that may alter things, may not…

He “rents” wi-fi from his next door neighbours – because of minimum contracts, etc, it’s not worth the hassle of getting his/my own contract for 6 months.

So do any of the above solutions affect the network/router as a whole or do they just affect the device being used to access the site?

I use UnblockUS, I did have the router DNS changed so that everything on the LAN was affected but it buggered up the Logitech radio in the kitchen. Now I’ve just got the PS3 and tablet DNS set to the UnblockUS servers, since I only ever watch Netflix through them anyway.

If you can change the dns on a router, you can do it for individual devices in the connection settings. It’s exactly what I’ve done with my tablet for iplayer and 4od with unlocator (our Orange livebox doesn’t allow for dns settings to be changed)

My experience (in the Alps) has been that using a proxy service slows down the connection to the point where streaming video isn’t practical. Broadband is awful here though – often less than 1Meg in resort. Better now that I’ve moved down the valley a bit!

I use Witopia for something similar. It only installs on the device so it doesn’t mess around with the router etc. There are probably cheaper ways to do it but over a year it costs peanuts.

I watch US Netflix from New Zealand, my ISP recently unblocked it but prior to that I was using Hola on Chrome, which worked well on the PC, and also used the Hola app on my android phone, which then made the Netflix app magically appear in the Play store so I could run it on my phone too. Hola’s pretty straightforward to use.

I really wouldn’t rely on accessing streaming services on the internet in Africa (especially on a ‘rented’ connection) and would second the suggestion of having a hard drive with a bunch of stuff on it, even if just as a backup.

Edit: My African connections recommend UnoTelly for DNS magic.

try tunnel bear – you can set where it appears your connection is coming from. So you can watch full iplayer from anywhere – or US netflix for instance by setting it to USA.

hola is your friend, it’s an extension for chrome and it means you can click on the flag and set your country to wherever you want , works like a dream and it means you can get American netflicks which is way better than the uk’s