Most media streaming sites such as Hulu block out Canadians from watching the videos, or in the case of Netflix send you to a very crippled (though still quite cheap) version of the site. This can make life frustrating for Canadians without cable or satellite television as it doesn’t allow them many legal options for accessing their video content on demand. There are many tutorials out there teaching you how to set up a proxy to view it through but ultimately free proxies go up and down too fast to rely on and a better method is available if you’re willing to spend a mere $5 a month.

1. Step 1: Sign up for Your Trial at Unblock-Us
2. Step 2: Configure Your Device with your New DNS Settings
3. Step 3: Sign up for a Virtual Credit Card at EntroPay
4. Step 4: Sign up for Hulu Plus
5. Alternative Methods

Step 1: Sign up for Your Trial at Unblock-US

Start off by going to Unblock-Us.com and creating a free trial account. You’ll get a free week to decide if it’s worth your while and then after that it’s a reasonable $5 per month fee for the service. What’s interesting about the service is that you only have to set their DNS in your router, then all computers and devices on the network will be able to access most American content such as Hulu and Netflix and even Pandora Radio, regardless of whether they’re running Windows, Linux or mobile OS. Since it is a paid service it is also reliable and will not fail you when you’re eagerly awaiting a new episode to watch.

With an account at Unblock-Us.com you’re then free to create an account on the american versions of Hulu and Netflix for another $8 a month and you the have access to far more content than you’d get in Canada and it’s still a fraction of the cost of cable or satellite internet.

Step 2: Configure Your Router and/or Devices with your New DNS Settings

This will certainly be the most challenging step for any non technical users. You will need to program the new DNS settings from Unblock-Us.com into either your router or the individual devices you wish to use to connect to Pandora. Rather than redo all their hardwork, I’ll now point you to their Knowledge Base for articles on how to use their DNS settings. For you power users that already know what to do with some DNS settings, go ahead and enter these settings below:

Step 3: Sign up for a Virtual Credit Card at EntroPay

Unfortunately Hulu does not allow you to sign up using a Canadian credit card, since most of you probably do not have an American credit card you will have to set up a virtual credit card through EntroPay.

Once at the EntroPay website click on Signup Now. Select USD as your Account Currency and your country as the Country. Fill in the rest of the form using a your real billing address for your Canadian credit card to fund the Virtual Visa card. On the next screen fill in the details of the credit card you want to use to fund the virtual Visa card. Continue on to the funding screen and add some funds to your to your account. I believe the minimum is $20 but I personally recommend about $24 to give you enough for 4 months service (3 months plus your 1 month trial). Just make sure to top up your virtual credit card every few months as EntroPay will not warn you when your balance is low and your automatic billing will fail..

Step 4: Sign Up for Hulu Plus

If you’re just looking to use the free Hulu site then you can skip this step and you’ll still have access to the newest content. Unlike with Netflix, Hulu will let you watch the last few episode of a show without paying. If you want access to all of their content you can sign up for a Hulu Plus account. Though I’ll warn you, even though you’re paying to access content they will still show advertisements. If that doesn’t bother you and you still want to access all of their content then head on to head to their sign-up and enter your email address. After your first week you will be billed if you want to continue receiving access to Hulu Plus.

Alternatives

VPS or VPN
As much as I hate to confuse the subject, I would like to point out that there alternatives to using Unblock-Us. In addition to using different DNS settings you can hide behind a VPS or a VPN. Both of these options will direct all your downloading through their servers meaning not only do you have to watch your own bandwidth but also that of your VPN or VPS. So make sure you go with a provider that has a high bandwidth limit or hopefully unlimited.

HotSpot Shield
There is also HotSpot Shield which will also give you a free trial, but they do have an ad supported version too. From there you can buy a year for $30 or pay $5 a month. I’ll admit I’ve only done their free trial version as well as their ad supported version and found it to have some issues that made me not want to continue with their service. The most frustrating issue was I kept getting blocked by sites such as my bank or my Gmail because of suspicious activity. I don’t think anyone was trying to do anything to my accounts but rather it was just a false positive caused by coming in through a different IP. I’ve also heard it can get rather slow at times, though I have not personally experienced this issue. This one will only work on your PC/Mac, so that’s another thing worth noting.

Unotelly
I have to mention this one despite having not tried it myself, Unotelly is often suggested to me as an alternative of Unblock-Us. From what I can tell it’s like an exact copy of Unblock-Us except I find their pricing model to be very confusing. It looks like there’s an option that’s about the same price but I’m really not sure. If you do try it out, let me know how it works for you.

Brad Fettes

A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 20 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.