HideIPVPN Review: View TV from Anywhere To Anywhere

HideIPVPN is a VPN and SmartDNS service provider that makes your traffic appear to originate from the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany or Canada. So if you wanted to watch USA Netflix, Hulu from anywhere but the USA, HideIPVPN does just that.  In fact if you face any region blocks at all, HideIPVPN gets around them fuss free

In this review im going to concentrate on the most bare bones usage of this service.  Like many people I’ve tried to access sites for shows that I follow such as NBC to watch Hannibal, Fox for Family Guy, Hulu or get Netflix’s USA offerings only to be location restricted. HideIPVPN provides you with a simple app to break down those internet walls.

But What Is A Vpn?

“It enables a computer to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if it were directly connected to the private network, while benefitting from the functionality, security and management policies of the private network” Think of it as your own traffic lane on a motorway where all the traffic is your’s and yours alone with the added benefit of being secure and away from prying eyes.

Most companies allow a VPN tunnel from outside into their own network so that workers can work securely from home.  VPN traffic is incredibly hard to monitor or to track due to it’s encrypted nature.  Now if you take that same principle but make your traffic look like you are in a different country you’ve an extra layer of security as well.

HideIPVPN Setup & Options

What sets HideIPVPN apart from other VPN offerings is how simple it is to get up and running with a native mac app.  It’s also more than just an “off and on” system as you can choose between different types of connections or different servers in the world to change your “location” at will.

Other products out there do the similar but mean faffing with DNS settings and that’s always a worry for me.  Using a private DNS raises a few security issues, but then again google’s spying on everyone anyways.

So What Country Do You Want To Pretend You Are in?

This also works for anyone not inside the UK.  For Americans wanting to watch BBC iPlayer the first option takes care of that, select Uk and bingo, suddenly you have access to our quality tv (Top Gear obvisouly) as it’s broadcast. Similarly Hulu in the USA becomes easily watchable.  Hulu.Jp obviously requires you to pretend to be from there, etc etc.

Best of all no browser restart is needed.  I did many tests trying to access Hulu with HideIPVPN off to get the error messages for this review, hit connect and bingo, straight in.  HideIPVPN opens up a whole world of TV watching, quite literally.

Just in case you are wondering what sites are geographically restricted theres a handy blog post to guide you in the right path.

HideIPVPN And Your Phone / Tablet

The full range of mobile devices is also supported. Ranging from mobile devices, xbox, playstation and including the Apple TV.  Netflix shows different content once connected but to connect via these devices you’ll need to use the SmartDNS service.  That just involves a simple changing of your dns settings which takes about 5 minutes to complete.

Can  I use HideIPVPN for Torrents?

P2P & Torrent traffic is allowed on NL servers (so all packages with access to NL servers can benefit from access to torrents via VPN) : for example http://www.hideipvpn.com/premium_vpn/premium-vpn-us-uk-nl-pptp-openvpn-l2tp-ipsec-and-proxy/ or torrent (mainly) package http://www.hideipvpn.com/premium_vpn/premium-p2p-bittorrent-vpn-pptp-l2tpipsec-and-proxy/

How To Watch Netflix USA or Hulu Plus From The UK

Theres no two ways about it, Hulu is just freaking awesome.  Up to date shows without a laborious wait to start watching new shows.  Why cant the uk be more like this?  Anyways if you’ve tried to hit a geo-restricted website like hulu you’ll be familiar with this message;

We’re sorry.  currently out video library can only be streamed from withing the united states.  For more information on Hulu’s international availability click here.

So fire up HideIPVPN and Hulu’s home screen turns from this..

To this.  Now you can watch Hulu with a press of a button, no need to change your DNS settings, just connect and away you go.

What is interesting within hulu’s statement is this.

Please note that Hulu does not work with anonymizers or proxy services. If you’re using such a service, please discontinue its use in order to watch Hulu videos.

So yet another reason to use the HideIPVPN service.  What you do is up to you and one way to keep your privacy is by using a VPN.  If you followed anything to do with Prism then you’ll appreciate the benefits of using a VPN service to keep you safe.

Netflix UK vs NetFlix USA

Here we have some before and after shots when I’ve connected via VPN. As you can see there’s quite a bit of difference just on the home screen alone.

The same effect happens on the iPhone and iPad if you use their smart Dns service. Believe me the USA offerings of Netflix are far and away better than that of the uk one’s

Overall

There’s little reason not to say that HideIPVPN isn’t an essential bit of software either wanting to indulge in shows without downloading them or taking away on holiday.  It’s not free but then again most things aren’t but if you value your privacy along with the features that I’ve mentioned here and barely scrapped upon, the value becomes easily recognisable.

You can see all the different VPN options that are dependant on your needs over at www.hideipvpn.com.  The premium and smart dns offerings are worth checking out

Whislt writing this review i realised it all sounds a little like its too good to be true and in some respects, something akin to an advert. Those HideIPVPN chats are tha confident in their offerings you get a free, 3 day trial