Many sites are Geo-restricted, these days. There are several options available to you if you’re outside of the US and looking to access US-only sites such as Hulu, Pandora, and Netflix, but none of them are as easy and straightforward as this one.
‘Media Hint’ is a free browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. Once installed, it runs in the background with nothing whatever for the user to configure. When you visit Geo restricted sites such as Hulu, the extension kicks in automatically and the videos or other content plays as per normal, without any problems or interruptions. It is ad-free and does not slow down your connection).
Note that ‘Media Hint’ does not work on all geo restricted sites. We were not able to access Spotify for example, but the three sites mentioned above (Hulu/Pandora/Netflix) worked great. (If Spotify is what you seek, see our tutorial on how to access Spotify from anywhere without bandwidth limitations)
How to use ‘Media Hint’: download and install the extension. On Chrome, you have to do this manually by opening the extensions page in the settings and dragging the crx file onto it. After this, you’re done. Browse as normal, go to Hulu or whatever, and your video will play magically without any geo-restrictions.
The verdict:
There are several services that can help you do this. For example, you can use a VPN service (virtual private networking) to tunnel through and get your internet service from servers in the country you seek, but free VPN’s (such as previously mentioned Tunnelbear) usually limit your monthly bandwidth or put ads in the browser.
Media Hint does no such thing; it does not limit bandwidth, does not slow down your browsing, and does not add ads. I don’t know how it tweaks your browser exactly, but it works great and without any user input whatsoever. In short, it is simply terrific.
[Thanks to reader Panzer for the tip about this software.]
Get Media Hint (Chrome, Firefox).
