How to get US Netflix in Canada

by Tech Mommy on February 24, 2013 in Apps, Cool Apps, iPad, Iphone, Reviews, Technology with 23 Comments
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It all began with the need to watch the third season of Sons of Anarchy. I would say it was a want, but no, I needed to see what was going on with Jax, Opie and Gemma right now.

I reached out to Twitter for ways to get US Netflix in Canada and tried a couple of suggestions:
- Change my DNS to OpenDNS. The instructions are here. In essence, you change you DNS to one that Is open and voila! you can view US Netflix. I tried this and kept getting Netflix errors and buffering issues. I guess the key is to keep trying new DNS’ until you get the right one. When it comes to Sons of Anarchy (and most things in my life), I just don’t have the patience.

- Free Streaming TV: You just click on this link and it takes you to free streaming episodes online. This worked for about 20 minutes and then I got kicked off ever 30 seconds or so. Might work better on days/ times with less demand. I was asking a lot from a free service on a Friday night.

- Tunnel Bear App: This app creates a virtual network for you to piggyback on. You just follow the instructions and in minutes, you can watch US Netflix, Hulu or any of the sites where you get an annoying message that you are outside of their service zone.

You get a really small amount of data to stream for free (about 2-3 hours of watching). To add more, you can tweet a message from the app that alerts the team to give you more space (this can be done once a month) or pay for unlimited access. Starting at $2.99 a month, it seemed reasonable enough to me.

There are some competitors like UnBlock US which charges about $5 a month.

The best part about changing your DNS, Tunnel Bear and Unblock US is that you don’t need to sign up for another Netflix account. Your access to shows and movies change to US or UK (you can chose your preference in the app) as it looks like you are traveling. Cool, huh?

I signed up for a month of Tunnel Bear and am loving it. Not only am I planning on watching season 3 and 4 of Sons of Anarchy, I’ve added the final season of Nip/Tuck, Gossip Girl and many movies to my list. At this rate, I’ll never go back to Canadian Netflix.

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This is not a paid post or review, I just really like Tunnel Bear. If they want to approach me to work with them, I would happily take their money.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/oldmanppi Phil Stewart

    I have to plug http://www.unotelly.com.
    As a nerd, it hasn’t let me down yet. And dynamicDNS allows you to switch to multiple countries around the world. Simple set on your router and forget.

    • JenBanksYEG

      Very cool. I am going to try it out. Thank you!

    • chimpakaextraman

      I used unotelly.com too and i have access to the US netflix catalog from Canada, Works Great!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/foomanizer Michael Williams

    Ugh, I’d posted something last night as soon as I saw the post but apparently it got eaten up.

    To
    correct, Unblock-Us is a DNS redirector. It’s what I use for my Wii to
    watch Netflix because the subjectively better and free http://www.tunlr.net
    doesn’t support console machines.

    As a whole, DNS
    redirectors tend to be a better option to a VPN as they don’t decrease
    your actual connection speed with where ever you’re trying to connect
    to, as it’s only the location requests that are redirected. As Phil
    mentioned, Unblock-Us also supports many other countries outside of just
    the US or UK. For instance, it also supports Brazil who has a decent
    distribution agreement with Disney to have a number of their titles on
    their list.

    DNS redirection is definitely making an
    impact on the way things are being broadcast and streamed. Tunlr.net has
    an interesting graph and blog post detailing their bandwidth
    consumption and usage during the 2012 Olympic games when North American
    users wanted to stream it from the BBC instead of having to deal with
    NBC’s horrible commentating.

    For me, the 5 bucks a
    month that unblock-us provides is well worth the additional price. If I
    could convince the wife to move from the Wii for streaming to an HDMI
    connected desktop running something like XBMC, then that price would drop with Tunlr’s free service.

    • JenBanksYEG

      Awesome to know. Thanks Micheal!

  • Tanknub

    I am using hotspot shield..I find it works awesome for watching US feed…just connect, and log onto netflix….occasionally, it will come up with a “location not recognized”, normally just means it is a state that does not allow streaming, disconnect and reconnect and all should be good…

  • HowToGetUSNetflix

    Hey Jen, thanks for shedding light on this topic to your readers! It’s great to see more Canadians learning the truth :)

    I started my own website last year with the purpose of teaching as many Canadians as I can about how to get American Netflix in Canada (and why they should)

    Here’s my site: http://www.howtogetusnetflix.com/

    I’ve tested almost every SmartDNS service. Ie: Unblock-us, Unotelly, Blockless, Overplay and a few VPN services like HMA vpn.

    I have come to the conclusion that Blockless & Unblock-us are the best. I’m currently suggesting others use Blockless to get American Netflix mainly because they have great support and they’re $0.74 cheaper than Unblock-us if you pay by Paypal. (every dollar saved counts in the course of a year!) but they are both great services.

    By the way it’s my first time to your blog, I’ll be sure to subscribe to your rss.

    Regards!

    Lucas

  • leelee

    I live in canada and i was trying to access american netflix based on the instructions above….. Just a note to everyone who is trying that it doesnt work!!!!

    • JenBanksYEG

      Which instructions were you trying, Leelee?

  • Lovethenorth

    Thanks for this. Teenaged son is currently having a temper tantrum because our OPSDNS stopped working and he can’t watch–you guessed it–Sons of Anarchy. :-)

  • Christina

    I use a service called Show Monkey https://showmonkey.com/
    They offer a 7 day free trial so you can try it out. I use it on my PS3, Xbox, iPad, etc. It’s been working great and it’s only $5/month. Great value considering all the content it unblocks for me. I only change the DNS on certain devices so I can still get the Canadian content on the others. Cable is officially gone!

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  • http://twitter.com/habanerogal habanerogal

    I also have suggestion for those on Mozilla Firefox there is an addon called Media Hint that allows access to all of the US network feeds, Hulu, Netflix etc. Just remember to disable it if you want to “go Canadian” again !

  • Dennis

    The DNS solution works well for Netflix, but a VPN based solution will give you access to any website and not just the ones supported by Unblock US and the other DNS sites out there. If you want to give the VPN approach a try then here is guide http://vpnfreedom.com/netflix/how-to-access-us-netflix-in-canada/

    • http://twitter.com/dougkrug Douglas Krug

      These are all great ideas, but the hassel is you either have slow connections, you run out of usage, or not all your devices get access. With a VPN enabled WiFi router, you can have an always on connection to allow ANY device to access any US or UK content with no limits for just $5/month. Best of all, your online activity is encrypted and kept private from your ISP. Here’s how to do it – http://bit.ly/16FmmY3

  • just use a free DNS

    Hey jen. You’re a loser and you have the grammatical stylings of a grade 10 drop out.

  • James Mesmo

    I am using free streaming and legal site http://motonempire.me/ ,

  • Awk

    I tried it but when I connect using the VPN to the us, Netflix will not show me US content or Canadian content from my PC.. Any ideas?

    • JenBanksYEG

      Hi Awk,
      You need to shut the Netflix app down completely and the login. You could also shut down your device, restart, start the VPN and then login to Netflix. That usually works for me.

  • sandra

    I’ve been looking for a solution forever… unotelly did the trick with ease. Only $5/month. Don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier?! Now to reduce my rogers bill;0)

  • Tracy

    OMG girl, you are so right about Tunnel Bear!! I had tried a bunch of things and nothing was as simple and smooth as TB. Plus, a grizzly with lasers shooting out of his eyes? You KNOW they mean business ;)

  • HelloMate

    I’ve been using UnoDNS to watch American and British Netflix in Canada and it works brilliantly: http://www.unotelly.com/unodns/. Enjoy!

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