As many of our customers already know, but those outside the beautiful world of US gift cards might not; there is an entire world of content that can be accessed in the United States, and with the right *tools*, can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
I discovered this several years ago, while traveling to different countries outside the United States, that depending on which country I was in, determined what content I was able to access. This was a huge bummer, because I was in the middle of an amazing TV show, and at night I wasn’t able to continue my binge watching of my favorite show.
But, luckily a friend of mine has a pretty slick solution, use a VPN service to spoof your location so it looks to the service provider—Netflix at this time—thinks you are located in the United States. Boom!
The technology behind this is quite simple. A VPN service (short for Virtual Private Network) is a service you can buy for very cheap (see our comparison VPN page here), and you can run on your computer, phone, and depending on the service, multiple other devices. When you load up the software, you will get a list of options to chose from where you can pick which location you want to “tunnel” to.
Smarty DNS Desktop App 
Express VPN Mobile App
As you can see from the screen shots, this software lets you pick which location services will see you from. Some services such as iTunes and Google don’t look at your location, but Spotify, Hulu, Netflix, and many more do!
Okay, now that you’ve learned how to spoof your location to anywhere in the world, which is basically magic, now how can you access content? Well, for TV streaming, the top three are Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. Lets break those down.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon’s Prime Video service was launched in 2006, but recently it has been gaining traction, and Amazon is reportedly investing a lot of money to create original shows and make this service a real contender.
The first part of Amazon Prime Video, is you get it by being a member of Amazon’s Prime service. This is a service which costs $119 per year (2018) which fortunately you can pay for with a US Amazon Gift Card and activate this from anywhere in the world.
Amazon’s Prime service is also great for shipping options, which may or may not benefit you from outside the United States, unless you are using a freight forwarding service which will help you receive your goods much faster than regular shipping.
(Side note, if you are interested in Amazon as a place to do your shopping, used books are still one of my favorite ways to save a lot of money on Amazon! I love their huge selection, and if it’s an older book I can often times find it for $3-4 USD plus shipping.)
Okay, now back to the streaming.
4K Quality Streaming, without the extra cost.
The biggest benefit to Amazon’s Prime Video product is the 4K streaming capability. If you compare prices between Amazon, Hulu and Netflix, Amazon wins as the cheapest option if you are looking for that 4K streaming. Amazon has stated they do not plan to hike prices for 4K streaming quality. Excellent!
Stream Amazon Prime Video on many devices
Luckily for Apple TV users, such as myself, Amazon and Apple got together and recently added the Amazon Prime Video app to Apple TV! Now you no longer need a Fire TV stick or certain Smart TV sets to stream Amazon Prime Video. If you don’t have an Apple TV, of course you can stream via several other options such as Blu-ray players, set-top boxes such as Roku, Google TV, TiVO, Nvidia Shield, Xbox, PlayStation, Wii, and many more. Of course don’t forget your very own computer or phone
In whichever way you decide to enjoy your content, we hope you get the most out of your experience and spend the time enjoying TV with your close friends and family.