How to Watch Your Favorite Movies Overseas

When you’re abroad and looking forward to watching a movie on a streaming service, sometimes you get a nasty surprise. Despite having a current subscription to watch the streaming service, accessing the service is often restricted. Why is this? It’s because the license rights haven’t been sold in the country or region that you’re in. As a result, you’re blocked because of geography despite paying for the access.

One way around this is to use a virtual private network (VPN). VPNs are usually premium services that re-route your internet traffic in a way to make it appear that you’re viewing the movie from your home country (or another one of your choosing). But are VPNs good value? You can decide if a VPN is worth the money by comparing the services.

How Do VPNs Work for Watching Movies?

When you’re interested in watching a movie from Hulu or Netflix, for instance, you’re often restricted by the country that you’re currently in. So, if you’re in Spain presently, Netflix will want to limit you to Spanish content with a smaller list of available movies to stream – they’re probably dubbed or subtitled in Spanish too.

Using a VPN, it reroutes your network traffic to connect from where you presently are to a VPN server at the other end (usually in your home country). Then the traffic continues normally to the streaming service. From the streaming service’s perspective, it appears as though you’re accessing the stream from the country where the VPN server is located (not your present location). As a result, they show you what’s available as if you were there right now. And when the new Scream movie is released, that’ll no doubt be available for you to be terrified all over again!

How Do You Watch a Movie?

Using a premium VPN service neatly gets around regional blocking. Simply connect to the VPN service first, and check that it’s properly connected and running. Then you can log in to your streaming service and pick the movie that you wish to watch. The movie’s stream will start normally. It’s as simple as that.

Are VPNs the Same as Anonymous Proxies?

No, VPNs are totally different. Even though some people use the terms interchangeably, it’s incorrect to do so. A proxy is essentially a simplistic way to spoof the connection to make it appear as though you’re accessing a website from another IP address. It doesn’t necessarily need to use an IP address originating in another country either.

Proxies are typically not confidential. So, the proxy owner could see what you’re streaming. Because you might also use a proxy or VPN to access your bank information or other confidential matters, that’s a relevant issue. You could forget that you’re connected to a proxy that inherently has less security and log into your bank anyway.

Anonymous proxies aren’t a sophisticated solution. They don’t let you easily swap between countries or alternative locations in the same country. Usually, there’s a very restrictive list of choices too. They also tend to be slow and often stop working unexpectedly.

What Advantages do VPN Providers Offer?

Professional VPN providers invest heavily in hundreds (if not thousands) of VPN servers around the globe. They ensure that they’re operational and offer fast connectivity compared to proxy servers too.

The operators usually confirm how many people are connected to a given VPN server and what the maximum capacity is. Therefore, it’s possible to strategically connect to ones that are less busy but are still based in the required country for an even faster throughput speed.

A VPN is far better suited to accessing continual movie streams without the stuttering or buffering that can interrupt a movie’s playback. Just that alone removes much of the frustration present with cheap alternatives that fail to deliver what’s required.

Are They Worth the Money?

When you’re abroad and cannot access the movies that you’d like to see, it’s enormously frustrating, especially if you’re already paying for a monthly subscription but still restricted from viewing the media.

A reliable VPN service can solve this problem without great extra expense. Not only that, but it can also let you use it for better security standards when abroad. This prevents your bank details and other confidential information from falling into the wrong hands. Sorting out these issues when away from home is a complete nightmare, so avoiding them is so important.

Also, please understand that occasionally a service like Netflix will attempt to block a VPN provider. This is done to prevent them from changing regions or countries to watch other content. However, this is rarely effective for long. Sophisticated customers usually have a couple of VPN services available to get around these temporary blocks which keeps them able to watch movies in the meantime.

In Conclusion

To get around the blocking of streaming due to your location, it’s necessary to use a premium VPN. They not only get around a country or regional redirection or blocking action, but they’re also useful to keep your web browsing private.