The rise of online streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu have been a boon for viewers. No longer do we need to schedule our lives around our favourite TV show or make sure we recorded it on our DVR. Not only that, we no longer need to wait till next week for the next episode of a lot of our TV shows.
Streaming services have given rise to the activity of binge watching where couch potatoes will sit down for the entire day and go through entire seasons of TV shows that have been running for years so they can catch up as quickly as possible without having to buy each season on a DVD.
Unfortunately, the miracles of streaming are not dispersed equally throughout the world. While the United States and other large markets in Western Europe such as Germany and Britain have nearly universal access to the latest that the internet has to offer, the same cannot be said for everyone else.
Geographic restrictions, ISP monitoring, and nefarious online activities have been on the rise in recent years. This has made the need for a virtual private network (VPN) increasingly important. Have a look at the best VPN for Canada.
This is even true for Canada. Because of Canada’s smaller market, even close proximity to the United States does not spare Canadian citizens from having to wait longer to be offered the newest products and services. This problem is seen in a prime example as Canadians have never had access to Hulu as of yet. In fact, currently the streaming platform is only available in the US and Japan.
But is there a way to overcome this problem?
As it turns out, there are quite a few ways in which Canadians can overcome playing second fiddle to larger markets. The most common solution many have settled on is the use of a VPN for Hulu that happens to also work great for other geo blocked streaming services.
What a VPN Does for You
A VPN is an online service that affords its customers the ability to remain private and hidden when going online. VPNs have a variety of features that make them attractive to different demographic groups. The most commonly sought for feature would be the privacy protection software.
A good VPN service will have bulletproof encryption technology in order to properly protect their customers. With a good VPN service, all your exchanges coming to and from your device will be securely encrypted using the VPNs very own encryption language.
Technically speaking, anyone can still intercept any of these exchanges. The difference is that when you are under the protection of a VPN service, all the exchanges that are intercepted will be in the VPN’s unique encryption code, making the information useless and the hacker’s efforts all for noting.
Another key feature of any good VPN service is the provision of alternative IP addresses. VPNs will provide a list of alternate IP addresses that can be from other parts of the country or even from a different continent.
When seeking access to this feature, all you need to do after you have turned on your VPN encryption is to choose from the list of alternate IP addresses that your VPN offers. Once you have made a selection, you will be connected to that particular server and all your exchanges will be routed through it. It will look from the outside as if you are actually located at the server’s location and unscrupulous third parties will be none the wiser.
How VPNs benefit streamers
When it comes to content streaming, the unfortunate reality is that the bounty of entertainment that the internet has to offer is not equally available to everyone. In fact, for some markets, the size and affluence of their consumer base is too small for many large companies to give them a second thought.
In the case of content streaming for Hulu, Netflix and the rest, some countries have to wait years to even have the service offered to them. And anyone familiar with purchasing a new service knows that the full range of features take months if not years to fully materialize.
A solution some tech-savvy netizens have been using is the alternate IP address feature of a good VPN. Since the United States is usually the market with the best access to just about anything, what Canadian netizens have started doing is they have been using VPNs with multiple servers in the United States and purchasing their streaming services when they are using an American IP address.
This has been an apparent success because this change has been enough to not only allow them access to streaming services, but access to the American selection of shows and movies, which is usually the gold standard of content selection.
This VPN feature has certainly generated many spillover effects, from gamers purchasing their games in the cheapest markets to netizens in China being able to go on Facebook and use Google. And of course, netizens in underserved markets are now able to consume the same content that is considered the birthright of larger markets.
Getting what you deserve
Streaming has been gaining steam over the past few years. As the technology becomes more sophisticated and the selection more diverse, it would seem that millions more are poised to cut the cord and go entirely online for good.
Good VPN services and their wide selection of alternate IP addresses have been very helpful to the netizens of smaller markets in their quest to do the same and unburden their budgets of their cable bills. By pretending that they are in a larger market, netizens of underrepresented markets are now able to enjoy all the online perks of being part of a large core market, but none of the perils.
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