- Up until around 2014, the cheap and easy way
to get around region-locked online content
was to fire up a trusty VPN like private internet access.
But then Netflix pushed an update
to detect and stop its users from doing so,
and the rest of the industry followed suit.
It was a dark time and many people
simply accepted that the golden age
of watching anything you wanted was over.
But what if I told you
that there's another way to mask your address.
One that could not only unblock geo-restricted content,
but even save you a substantial amount of money
on your subscriptions?
What if I told you you can use it on your smart TV,
home console, or any other device?
And what if I told you about it
after this message from today's sponsor, Jackery?
Thanks, Jackery, for sponsoring this video.
From September 20th to October 18th,
Jackery is celebrating their ninth anniversary
with a photo contest. Watch till the end to learn more.
(electronic music)
- Whether it's an out-of-market sports ball game,
your favorite show that just got taken off Netflix
but only in your region, or just any other random footage
that's exclusively available in some other country,
losing access to content sucks.
I mean, as a user, you don't care which cable network
or syndication has the rights.
You just want to kick back, relax,
and put whatever you want on the big screen.
Now even when they worked, there were drawbacks
to using a VPN to get around these problems.
I mean it wasn't convenient exactly
to configure it on devices like smart TV's and Roku's.
And especially if you were proxying to a distant location,
your network performance for everything
other than your stream could slow down substantially.
Thankfully, a Canadian company got fed up and
went to work developing something similar to a VPN
but kind of better actually, at least when it comes to
watching sports and streaming services,
and I'll tell you more about why it's not a replacement
for a VPN later.
Meet the Stream Locator.
The hardware is, frankly speaking, nothing special.
It's a gigabit-capable AC1200 dual-band router.
The real magic is in their customized
open WRT-based firmware that uses a combination
of smart DNS, transparent DNS proxy,
and domain IP-based smart routing
to circumvent regional blocks.
And it does all of this while not slowing down or
compromising the security of your regular browsing.
Now, of course, our reviewers are not going to
accept magic as an explanation for how a device
on their network functions and they shouldn't.
So let's talk about how exactly it works.
Now, normally you type netflix.com into your browser,
which sends a request to a DNS server,
which converts that netflix.com URL to an IP address
that your browser can actually connect to.
Then traffic starts to flow, the Stream Locator deviates
from this normal manner of operation
by checking your DNS requests
against a bank of URLs that it has stored.
If it sees you're searching for a video streaming site,
it takes the IP address that your DNS server says
corresponds to that URL and throws it in the garbage.
Instead, it responds with the IP of a proxy server
that is in the region you're trying to access it from
and all of your traffic reroutes through that,
just like how a VPN works.
It's a pretty elegant solution to this problem,
and we actually wanted to shoot our review
of this thing over a month ago.
But then Netflix managed to block Stream Locator system
just two days after we had tested the device
and confirmed that it worked, talk about timing.
Now Stream Locator has recently
gotten things back up and running again,
using basically the same system we just explained,
but with an added layer of IPV six hackery
and at the time of writing American Netflix is back online
with the promise of more countries
in the near to mid future.
I said a moment ago that it works just like a VPN,
but I also said before that
that it's not a replacement for a VPN, what gives.
Okay.
The difference is that a VPN routes all of your traffic
through the selected proxy server and all of the good ones,
encrypt your data to make it more difficult for your
internet service provider to track what you're doing.
Both of those factors contribute to crap your performance.
Stream Locator, by contrast, doesn't advertise
any kind of privacy enhancement whatsoever.
But the benefit of their approach is that
by cherry picking the traffic that gets rerouted,
they can achieve performance in other applications
like web browsing and gaming that
is on par with your raw connection.
Here's a quick demo. Let's say we like UFC,
but we don't like paying jacked up,
American pay-per-view prices for it.
Let's subscribe for $12 and 50 cents a month in Germany,
where they're obviously struggling to find an audience
for the sport and look at that, same sweaty dudes and gals
beating each other up, much lower price.
Now we jump into a game while our stream is running
on a second monitor and look at these ping times,
just about identical to our regular connection.
Now you might look at this and think, gee,
that could really be a software product.
And honestly, that was my first response.
Seems reasonable on the surface,
but only if you want to use it on a computer.
Consider this, certain devices and services don't use DNS.
For example, the Netflix smart TV app
is developed by Netflix. It doesn't have to check
Netflix's own address with a DNS server
and instead it just connects directly to the IP.
To adapt to this, Stream Locator uses IP forwarding
instead of smart DNS in those situations.
Now they could build apps for every device under the sun
that each contain all of the necessary workarounds,
but that would introduce a ton of development overhead.
And I actually agree with them that from a user perspective,
this is way simpler to use.
Instead of downloading and logging into
and configuring an app, I just plug this unit into my
existing modem router combo that my ISP sent me.
It detects my existing sub-net
and creates a non conflicting one
for all the devices that connect to it,
and then I never think about it again.
You even have the choice between using the
wifi access point that's built into your Stream Locator
or connecting to a higher performance one.
If it's a dedicated AP,
like ones we've shown in the past from Ubiquiti or Ruckus,
then no special configuration is required
other than disabling the wifi in the Stream Locator,
but if you want to use an all-in-one
like wifi router connected to it
you'll probably need to put it in bridge mode.
Now the most pain-free install would be to
put your ISP combo unit in bridge mode
so it's acting only as a modem
and have the Stream Locator act as your router
and wireless access point for your whole system.
Connecting to it is as simple as connecting
to your existing network.
Unfortunately in our experience
that comes with some limitations,
the stripped down version of open WRT that
they're running has some of the advanced features removed.
And I really do mean advanced features and finger quotes
because I don't personally consider port forwarding to be
that advanced. Also the hardware inside is fine at best.
It uses a media tech MT, 76, 21 8 chip set,
which is enough to speed test our
gigabit connection at around 850 megabits,
so more than enough for most residential connections
but it's not exactly state-of-the-art.
Back to the good stuff though,
it has this really cool function where you can run supported
streaming services from different locations concurrently.
So back to VPNs for a second,
remember the way they work is you choose one location
and all of your network traffic routes through it.
So if you wanted to say, for example,
watch a UFC fight with that cheap German subscription
while also streaming something from BBC,
you're fresh out of luck. With the Stream Locator though,
you could have Netflix from the UK and
American Amazon prime at the same time,
hooked up to your home theater screen.
Just check out the services list,
toggle the options you want, and you're all set.
Speaking of home theaters by the way,
we've got a doozy of a video coming up where we're going to
be testing HTML 2.1 cables from a ton of manufacturers
to see who's lying and who's not,
make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it.
If you're trying to maintain privacy for whatever reason,
a VPN is still an important piece of your toolkit.
And it should be noted that any device whose purpose
is to sort through your internet traffic
has inherent privacy risk associated with it.
You've got to kind of trust Stream Locator
because we don't have any way of guaranteeing that
they're not benefiting from any kind of data collection.
I'd love to hear your guys discussion
about that in the comments below.
What we do know for sure is that for the price,
it's a really compelling package
that does exactly what it says on the tin.
For 85 bucks, which includes the first year of service
after which at seven dollars a month,
it really does unlock region locked content,
which is all fine and good. But my Lord is this legal?
Well... yes and maybe no.
Their own website states the following,
the short answer yes of course.
Stream Locator is completely legal in 99% of the world,
which of course leaves out that 1% which could be a lot
more than 1% because if you're living somewhere like
China or Iran, which last time I checked
is a lot more than 1% of the world,
you could very well be breaking laws by using this thing.
The good news for everyone else is that the
worst case scenario is that right holders
might get mad at streaming platforms
for not geoblocking their content effectively enough,
but that doesn't really sound like your problem does it.
What it does sound like is a segue to our sponsor, Jackery.
Jackery wants to inspire an outdoors lifestyle,
so they're advertising online as tech tips
because apparently they think we need to be reached.
They want people to be closer to nature
and to live with a positive and energetic attitude.
And from September 20th to October 18th,
they are celebrating their ninth anniversary
with a photo contest for a chance to win big prizes.
To enter, all you have to do is
take a picture of you exploring the outdoors
and upload it to their campaign site.
All winners will be notified by email by October 29th,
and we're going to have all the links down below.
Seriously though guys,
if you're using a VPN and it works for you keep using it.
And if you liked this video make sure you check out
our video on how to browse the internet anonymously.