International video streaming (Netflix, Hulu+ etc.) - decent quality possible?

C

crxboy

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At the brink of giving up hope - herewith my plea for any help or guidance.

I am struggling to stream decent video quality on Netflix and Hulu+.

I am connecting via HMA! Pro. I understand the VPN service has a negative impact on speed. The video streams without buffering most of the time but the picture quality is poor. Can anyone recommend a HMA connection location that works for them?

I have tried using Unotelly (DNS-service) but have not noticed any marked improvement in the video quality.

My line synchronizes at 8MB and I get full speeds on local and news servers, however my international speed tests seem to hover around 3.5 - 4MB (off topic - is this dramatic drop off in speed between local and international 'normal?).

Is there any hope of getting decent video quality from these international video providers or am I just p**sing in the wind here.

Any advice on getting the video quality up would be much appreciated.
 
Try Hotspot Shield, you will get full speed of your line and it is fast, so It will improve your Hulu Video quality. I use it everyday on hulu.
 
I just use a DNS server, it works 100%, its free and I have no decrease in speed.
Just Change your Preferred DNS Server to 74.207.242.213 and leave your alternate blank
I saw this trick on an old thread here.
 
Great. I appreciate all the responses I will try them out tonight and over the weekend - will keep you posted on my findings.
 
I also asked this question a while ago and settled on one of the free dns servers as it works well for me.
 
Only managed a few minutes to play with this yesterday; there were some minor issues on my line that Afrihost sorted for me.

The DNS approach works (I am using Unotelly) however I cannot get HD content from Netflix at all, Hulu works on 480p but 720p is an issue (buffering). BBC iPlayer HD not working (SD is OK).

Does anyone here stream 720 smoothly from the sites above? If yes woul;d you mind sharing your 'setup'?
 
I run Netflix and Hulu through a SSH tunnel. Plays seamlessly.
 
It appears I have an issue with my line - hence all the headaches with regards to HD streaming. I get full line speed on my local traffic (i.e. 6.5-8MB) but my international struggles to hit 2MB download (International will always be slower - but I feel 4MB down is a reasonable expectation?). Fault has been logged with Telkom - so now the long wait.

Out of interest what down speeds are you guys/girls getting on your international down using 8-10MB lines?

I used myBB International speedtest, speedtest.net (London - Vodafone) and 100MB test files from http://www.thinkbroadband.com/download.html to check my international download speed. All my results hover around 1.7 to 2MB download speed.
 
crxboy said:
Out of interest what down speeds are you guys/girls getting on your international down using 8-10MB lines?
Click to expand...
Good luck with Telkom, probably you gonna need it :) My line is 6Mb and i'm watching all the time Bulgarian and Russian TV channels. My dl speed is around 620-630k which is almost fine when watching channels in 720p.
 
Segg said:
I just use a DNS server, it works 100%, its free and I have no decrease in speed.
Just Change your Preferred DNS Server to 74.207.242.213 and leave your alternate blank
I saw this trick on an old thread here.
Click to expand...

Which DNS server is that?
 
Segg said:
I just use a DNS server, it works 100%, its free and I have no decrease in speed.
Just Change your Preferred DNS Server to 74.207.242.213 and leave your alternate blank
I saw this trick on an old thread here.
Click to expand...

I'm going to give this a try later but I'm wondering why this would work since my IP address is still from SA?
 
Loved this quote, "The content that's on Hulu is also on TPB. The only thing that I'm blocked from is paying for it."
 
Segg said:
I just use a DNS server, it works 100%, its free and I have no decrease in speed.
Just Change your Preferred DNS Server to 74.207.242.213 and leave your alternate blank
I saw this trick on an old thread here.
Click to expand...

This actually works on my PC. Will try my iPad now as well with the Hulu app.
 
biometrics said:
I'm going to give this a try later but I'm wondering why this would work since my IP address is still from SA?
Click to expand...

"ProxyDNS works mostly like a normal DNS, not altering your normal browsing in any way, but only for those sites that are blocked for you. It all happens so transparently that you just notice the fact that there is no blocking anymore."
 
maybe try a different ISP, I don't think there's a fault with your line, in my opinion its the ISP. They probably are supplying you with poor international, How can you receive such fast local and then slow international?, there's definately a problem with the ISP, why don't you be some gigs from another ISP and test them out, my open web uncapped account usually comes very close to max speed internationally.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9780 using Tapatalk
 
Tremayn said:
maybe try a different ISP, I don't think there's a fault with your line, in my opinion its the ISP. They probably are supplying you with poor international, How can you receive such fast local and then slow international?, there's definitely a problem with the ISP, why don't you be some gigs from another ISP and test them out, my open web uncapped account usually comes very close to max speed internationally.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9780 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Thanks Tremayn - you managed to put into words, how I feel about this (the difference in speed between international and local traffic just does not add up).

I actually have a few days of the after hours unshaped from OW in my 'back pocket'. I will put it through it's paces tonight. I feel ashamed that I haven't done this already (in my defense, the majority of my testing was done during office hours when that OW account gets shaped like a mofo).
 
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