Continuing our voyage of being an online TV only viewing home, we’re now using Unotelly (thanks Adam).  After spending a week earlier this month in the UK visiting family, we really appreciated the quality of the children’s programming with Cbeebies and CBBC, and the kids wanted to continue watching once back in the US. I’ve used VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) in the past, but speed and volume limitations on the data always made the experience less than ideal. Then I was introduced to Unotelly, a DNS (Domain Name System) service that changes your IP address to the country of the service you are accessing, so you appear local.  Hence we can stream online TV without geo-restrictions. From the Unotelly discussion forums a popular use case is Canadians watching US Netflix with their Roku devices, as it has four times the content.  Enabling people to watch the FIFA World Cup gave the service a big boost in the US given the restrictions on where that content was available.

I first tried Unotelly out on my laptop, changed the DNS settings, and got the the BBC iPlayer site and all the content there as it automatically changed my IP address to the UK. Next the iPad, initially accessing content through the broswer then I created a UK iTunes account and downloaded the iPlayer app. The experience on the laptop and iPad are perfect. Next the PS3, same procedure, change the DNS settings, create a UK PSN account and download the iPlayer. With the PS3 we do see the occasional buffering stall, we did watch a HD documentary and the picture quality was good, then an SD show on a Sunday evening and things were starting to slow. But the main use case is for the kids on the iPad, which has no problems.  Changing a Roku device is a little bit more of a pain, but I did not need to cover that use case.

The service can be used to access content in many countries, e.g. Germany, Spain, New Zealand, Australia, US etc.. Another nice use case for us is when we visit Canada, US Netflix still works.  Unotelly costs $5 per month. We’re giving it a go and will update on our experiences.