Unblock-US (and an Android hack), proxy service to access certain services
There are some great internet streaming services out there, however most of them are either in the USA or the UK. I'm talking about services like Hulu, Pandora and BBC Iplayer.
These services are generally geo-blocked, so they will only work if the service recognises that you are based in the US / UK (obviously depending on service where you are based).
In the past I've looked at using VPN services and have tested a few out. Generally they worked OK, but they were quite fiddley, in that there was quite a bit to set up. Things could be automated, but it required some work. Also I found that speeds were not the best, resulting in the dreaded "buffering" issue. Being in Hong Kong, connections to foreign US / European sites are already very slow, add into the mix connecting via a VPN and things really do suffer.
I then stumbled upon a service called Unblock-us: http://www.unblock-us.com. Basically with this service you change your DNS server details to the one that Unblock-us provides. From what I gather whenever you go to a specific site (like Hulu for example) the traffic is shifted through the Unblock-us servers to pretend that you are in the USA. This seems to suggest that the service has a "whitelist" of certain sites. The benefit of this is that all your other browsing goes through normal channels and at normal speeds.
Another great thing about this service is that you can make changes at router level or computer level. For me I've done it on my router. There is a good thread on DSL Reports which has some further information: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25640778-Anyone-using-Unblock-us-~start=40.
As a result of the service I can now play Pandora through my Squeezebox Boom and watch the likes of Netflix and Hulu on my TV (through my HTPC). Obviously the service is only limited to a certain number of services, but it does work with the big names like Hulu, Pandora and BBC Iplayer.
The above is all well and good, and the service works great. Next thing I wanted to try was to get the service to work on my Android phone. Using it through wifi was fine, as you can change the DNS settings for wifi, however trying to change the DNS settings when connecting to your mobile network is not so easy.
Through my searching I found a posting on the XDA forums about changing DNS settings on Android (basically the post was about trying to change the mobile network DNS settings so the person in question could use OpenDNS instead of the mobile network): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=450807
The thread linked to this blog post: http://blog.varunkumar.me/2010/09/how-to-change-dns-server-of-3g.html. There were two suggestions there, one involving playing around with ADB and the other was to download a program called "Scripting Layer for Android": http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/. For me downloading the program was a more preferable option than dealing with ADB.
The blog provided a wrapper script for Open DNS, it was just a question of amending this script to the DNS details provided by Unblock-us. Result is that the DNS settings are changed on the mobile, so that I can play Pandora Radio, watch BBC Iplayer, etc. Obviously I do have issues with network connection speeds, but this is more to do with my network (Three Hong Kong) than anything else. This work around is session specific, so if I restart the phone or use wifi and then back to my mobile network, it reverts back to the network default DNS settings. For this reason I've created a shortcut to the relevant script, so I just have to click on the shortcut to let the script run.
Hopefully you've found this useful and if you decide to sign up to Unblock-us, could you use this referral link: http://unblock-us.com
