I´ve moved to Switzerland some months ago and I don’t speak German yet which is the main language of the region I am living on. So I started to search for online solutions to be able to watch TV channels, movies and so in English and Spanish (the ones I speak). The problem is that Netflix, Spotify, Hulu and Zattoo, among other´s sometimes are not available in certain regions, or the content they provide for a particular country is very poor…

Their websites detect from where you are connecting and display a message saying that the service is not yet available in your country, or they offer limited versions of their content when compared to USA.

I´ve tested a lot of solutions to resolve this issue, including Hide My Ass VPN service but it was expensive and slow. A VPN works as a “middle-service” between you and the destination (for example Netflix) so you have to rely on your bandwidth to Hide My Ass servers and also on their quality connection to the destination.

I came across a DNS solution, DNS (Domain Name System) translates a name (www.netflix.com) into an IP number (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) which corresponds (generally) to a server, by using specific DNS servers from providers located in the USA, websites like Netflix think you are connecting from that country and so they grant you access or show you the complete content as if you where in that location.

There is a free service offered by http://tunlr.net which offers access to several services like: Zattoo.com, Spotify.com, Hulu.com among others. Until some time ago they also offered free access to Netflix but because their service remain for free, they had to cancel it as it was impossible to maintain because of the amount of people using it.

So, for Netflix, and any other service that doesn’t work with Tunlr you could use UnoTelly. They provide access through their DNS system spreaded all over the world (not only 2 servers as Tunlr). Their pricing is very attractive USD 3,99 per month with a free trial for 8 days without the need of a credit card (something everybody likes :)).
You can access from almost any device you have and even allows all your members of your family to use the service at the same time. The list of services/channels they tested is very big you can check it out here.
They also offer an exclusive service called DynamoDNS this allows two people at the same house to watch Netflix USA and Netflix Argentina for example at the same time on different devices, you can get more information about this here. You might also want to take a look at their website to check all the information, tutorials and step by step guidance which I found it very nice.
Note: Keep in mind that you will still have to pay for correspondent subscription at Netflix or any other service that need payment.

Changing the DNS servers on your own Windows computer might be very simple for some people, but not so for others. Even if you know how to do it, its not nice to manually change them each time, so I´ve found a tool called: DNS Jumper 1.04 which really does the trick, its very simple to use and you can just use it to switch to a pre-defined list or a personalized list of DNS servers at your preference, the best of all its free.
To simplify things even more, I´ve added Tunlr´s and UnoTelly´s DNS Servers available until today (October 18th 2012), you can download this version with the whole list from this link. (Password to uncompress the file: “itcentralpoint.com” without quotes).

Tip: Every time you change a DNS Server is always good to follow these steps: 1) Select a DNS from the list > 2) Click on Apply DNS. > 3) Click on Flush DNS. > 4) Close your browser and open it again. If you still see old content try with CTRL+F5 to refresh the website without using local cache.

In case you are using UnoTelly just make sure to select the nearest DNS Servers from where you are going to connect. You can check the response time for each DNS Server by selecting one from the list and clicking on the up & down arrows, the shorter the better. For example, I am in Switzerland, I selected the Germany DNS servers and the speed result is very good 22 milliseconds. If I choose a far away destination for example Singapore I get 387 milliseconds.

So now, you are able to watch all the content which you were not able to watch before. If you are using any other method don’t hesitate to share it below. Which one do you use? Netflix? Hulu? Zattoo?

UPDATE: The guys at UnoTelly read my review on their service and provided me with a discount coupon for the first 10 readers that buy their service:

The coupon code is: itcentralpoint

1. The coupon can be used 10 times.
2. The expiry date is April 30 2013
3. The coupon can be applied to any UnoDNS Gold products
4. The coupon can be redeemed during checkout to get 10% off

With regards to the discount, this is a one time fee discount to any Gold package product.
However, they offer 30 days, 90 days, 180 and 365 packages for users to select from.
Note: This is only for our benefit, not mine.