You can watch all sorts of television shows online nowadays. If you’ve missed an episode of Corner Gas, or ER, you can go to your television network’s website and see if they offer it for you to watch there. And often it is. However if you want to watch something on NBC or another US channel and you happen to be Canadian, you will find that you get a message saying something similar to “this content is not available in your region”. Which can be really annoying. After all, we are only miles from our American friends, why can’t we see it too?

This practise is called Geo-blocking or geo-gating and networks restrict access to online videos outside the territories when they hold the rights. However there is a way around it, that is completely legal.

What you can do is download a “cloaking” program to your computer, and none of the sites you were previously blocked from viewing are suddenly unable to tell where you are located, and their content is now available. Not only that, but it may make your computer a bit more secure as well!

Go to anchorfree.com and download the program Hotspot Shield. It only takes a minute to install. And watch to your heart’s content.

March 25 update – this worked really well the first time I used it, but since then I tried it again and it wouldn’t work at all. Perhaps the stations have caught on and adapted with their own software. Also, I couldn’t watch stations that are local when it was turned on! So it may not work any longer. The border guards are up again!