I Spy…

I signed up for a free peek at Hula.com which is a new service offered by NBC and allows viewers to see live streaming video content from all their shows. The service is in beta and by invite only.

A few days ago I finally received my “invite” so I excitedly logged in and decided to take it for a test drive to find a message saying:

“This video is not available in your country or region.”

Now I am American but I live in Ireland at the moment so I can understand why I might get that error. I was still quite disappointed to be honest.

Today I found a way around this and it’s not a bad solution to be honest. It’s not perfect don’t get me wrong but hey I can finally watch SNL after 3 years. There is a god. So for all you Hulu users that have an account but still can’t see the clips, read on for my solution.

1. Download and install AnchroFree’s Hotspot Shield at http://hotspotshield.com/.

2. Follow their instructions on how to get connected.

Sounds easy and it is but there are a few downfalls that I can see so far. First don’t stay connected all the time, only when you are actually watching HULU or any other USA only content. You will notice a speed difference since your actually being routed around the net via proxy servers behind the hood to mask your location. Second, you notice the odd ad here and there popping up and interfering with your browsing experience. This is to be expected I guess since the software used to do this is provided for free.

The software is also available for Mac OSX and Windows so it’s good for nearly everyone.