Expat Community > Italy

Sergios
Joined 2010
Posts: 1476

Watching American TV in Italy

9 years ago

Lets face it, Italian TV for those used to American TV is terrible. Not to say that American TV is the greatest but the endless variety shows and game shows and the dozens of shopping networks makes Italian TV pretty miserable fare. To counteract this I brought an Apple TV with me. There starts my story of woe. There is a happy ending and everything turned the way I needed it to and it was dead simple to do in the end so if you want to skip the details and go to the solution, just go to the end.
Before leaving for Italy a did some research and found that by using what is called a VPN setup, Virtual Private Network, I can fool the US based providers like HBO, HULU, and Netflix into not knowing I was trying to watch there stuff from outside the USA. They impose a Geoblock on such programming. The trick is to not let them know where your watching from.
VPN, specifically for Apple TV but also for the other devices out there made by amazon and google and others, streaming devices, uses a second internet router attached to the home router you are using. This second router is instructed to go through a VPN provider [pay service] that channels the internet connection through servers that they have setup in many places in the US.
I first used the most recommended of these, HideMyAss and soon found that either I had to by a specifically setup router through them, or I had to modify a recommended router using a third party software to “flash” my router. After searching all over Palermo I found one of the recommended routers and applied the flash according to instructions. The router, which I bought on sale for 100 euro, successfully bricked when I was done. To those who don’t now the technical jargon, bricked means that my brand new router was turned into a brick. It had the functionality of a brick and the usefulness of a brick. And since I flashed it I also removed the warrantee. After countless hours dealing with tech support I gave up on this company. Back to the internet I found another VPN company, pureVPN, that could work with existing routers, but only specific ones, none of which were available off the shelf in Palermo. So I ordered an Asus router from Amazon.it and waited. It took 2 weeks to get because of various issues I’m not going to get into but…it didn’t work. I spent hours, days with tech support but the unit would not do what it was supposed to do, allow me to see Hulu and HBO. Finally, I did some research on the internet and found out how to set it up and it worked, sort-of. I taught tech support how to do it. The problem was, however, that the connection was slow. It would constantly buffer while watching. The internet connection I had had been upgrade to the fastest available, for an added cost of $500/year but I was still get very slow throughput through the Asus router. SoI went into the menu and tinkered and found a setting that promised greater speed. I set it, rebooted the router and found that i was the proud owner of a second brick.
Now a month into this and very frustrated, I did some more research. This time, by accident, I came across another company that did not use VPN but what is called Smart DNS. This does not require a router but just a simple setting on your computer and smart phone and directly into the Apple TV. to make the change takes minutes and costs nothing other than the monthly charge to the service provider. However, I soon found out that not all these service providers are up to standards. Some are more difficult to setuo than other and some do not work as advertised. Through trial and error I eventually found that I need two service providers. One for the AppleTV and the other for my wife’s obsession with pop american radio. I could not find one provider that would work with both.
SmartyDNS is the company that works really well with the AppleTV and its only about $5.00 month while ExpressVPN is the company that works with radio stations. Only use the expressvpn while listening to the radio because it really slows down your computer or table if you try to surf the web or anything else. SmartyDNS is fast but I could not get it to allow me to listen to radio. Maybe there is a way. If anybody else finds it, please let me know. But for now, Game of Thrones will be on time and in HD.

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SJB Global is a top-rated financial advisory firm specializing in expat financial advice worldwide, offering retirement planning & tax-efficient solutions with a regressive fee model.
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Watching American TV in Italy

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