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up until around 2014 the cheap and easy way to get around region-locked online

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content was to fire up a trusty vpn like private internet access but then netflix

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pushed an update to detect and stop its users from doing so and the rest of the

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industry followed suit it was a dark time and many people simply accepted

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that the golden age of watching anything you wanted was over

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but what if i told you that there's another way to mask your address one

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that could not only unblock geo-restricted content but even save you

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a substantial amount of money on your subscriptions what if i told you you can

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use it on your smart tv home console or any other device

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and what if i told you about it after this message from today's sponsor

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jackery thanks jackery for sponsoring this video from september 20th to

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october 18th jackery is celebrating their 9th anniversary with a photo

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contest watch till the end to learn more

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whether it's an out-of-market sports ball game your favorite show that just got taken off netflix but only in your

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region or just any other random footage that's

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exclusively available in some other country losing access to content sucks i

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mean as a user you don't care which cable network or syndication has the

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rights you just want to kick back relax and put whatever you want on the big

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screen now even when they worked there were drawbacks to using a vpn to get

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around these problems i mean it wasn't convenient exactly to configure it on

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devices like smart tvs and rokus and

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especially if you were proxying to a distant location your network

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performance for everything other than your stream could slow down

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substantially thankfully a canadian company got fed up

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and went to work developing something similar to a vpn but

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kind of better actually at least when it comes to watching sports and streaming

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services and i'll tell you more about why it's not a replacement for a vpn

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later meet the stream locator the hardware is

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frankly speaking nothing special it's a gigabit capable ac 1200 dual band router

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the real magic is in their customized open wrt based firmware that uses a

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combination of smart dns transparent dns proxy and domain ip-based smart routing

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to circumvent regional blocks and it does all of this while not slowing down

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or compromising the security of your regular browsing now of course our

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viewers are not going to accept magic

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as an explanation for how a device on their network functions and they

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shouldn't so let's talk about how exactly it works

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now normally you type netflix.com into

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your browser which sends a request to a dns server which converts that

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netflix.com url to an ip address that

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your browser can actually connect to then traffic starts to flow

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the stream locator deviates from this normal manner of operation by checking

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your dns requests against a bank of urls

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that it has stored if it sees you're searching for a video streaming site it

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takes the ip address that your dns server says corresponds to that url and

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throws it in the garbage instead it responds with the ip of a proxy server

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that is in the region you're trying to access it from and all of your traffic

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reroutes through that just like how a vpn works it's a pretty

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elegant solution to this problem and we actually wanted to shoot our review of

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this thing over a month ago but then netflix managed to block stream locator

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system just two days after we had tested the device

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and confirmed that it worked talk about timing now streamlocator has recently

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gotten things back up and running again using basically the same system we just

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explained but with an added layer of ipv6 hackery and at the time of writing

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american netflix is back online with the promise of more countries in the near to

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mid future i said a moment ago that it works just like a vpn but i also said

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before that that it's not a replacement for a vpn

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what gives okay the difference is that a vpn routes

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all of your traffic through the selected proxy server and all of the good ones

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encrypt your data to make it more difficult for your internet service

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provider to track what you're doing both of those factors contribute to crap

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your performance stream locator by contrast doesn't

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advertise any kind of privacy enhancement whatsoever but the benefit

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of their approach is that by cherry picking the traffic that gets rerouted

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they can achieve performance in other applications like web browsing and

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gaming that is on par with your raw connection

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here's a quick demo let's say we like ufc but we don't like paying jacked up

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american pay-per-view prices for it let's subscribe for 12.50 a month in

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germany where if they're obviously struggling to find an audience for the

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sport and look at that

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same sweaty dudes and gals beating each other up much lower price

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now we jump into a game while our stream is running on a second monitor and look

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at these ping times just about identical to our regular

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connection now you might look at this and think gee

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that could really be a software product and honestly that was my first response it

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seems reasonable on the surface but

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only if you want to use it on a computer

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consider this certain devices and services don't use

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dns for example the netflix smart tv app

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is developed by netflix it doesn't have to check netflix's own address with a

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dns server and instead it just connects directly to the ip

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to adapt to this stream locator uses ipforwarding instead of smart dns in

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those situations now they could build apps for every device under the sun that

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each contain all of the necessary workarounds but that would introduce a

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ton of development overhead and i actually agree with them that from a

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user perspective this is way simpler to use

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instead of downloading and logging into and configuring an app i just plug this

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unit into my existing modem router combo that my isp sent me it detects my

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existing subnet and creates a non-conflicting one for all the devices

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that connect to it and then i never think about it again

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you even have the choice between using the wi-fi access point that's built into

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your stream locator or connecting to a higher performance one if it's a

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dedicated ap like once we've shown in the past from ubiquity or ruckus then no

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special configuration is required other than disabling the wi-fi in the stream

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locator but if you want to use an all-in-one like wi-fi router connected

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to it you'll probably need to put it in bridge mode now the most pain-free

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install would be to put your isp combo unit in bridge mode so it's acting only

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as a modem and have the stream locator act as your router and wireless access

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point for your whole system connecting to it is as simple as connecting to your

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existing network unfortunately in our experience that comes with some

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limitations the stripped-down version of open wrt that they're running has some

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of the advanced features removed and i

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really do mean advanced features and finger quotes because i don't personally

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consider port forwarding to be that advanced also the hardware inside is

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fine at best it uses a mediatek

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mt7621a chipset which is enough to speed

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test our gigabit connection at around 850 megabits so

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more than enough for most residential connections but is not exactly state of

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the art back to the good stuff though it has this really cool function where you can

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run supported streaming services from different locations concurrently

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so back to vpns for a second remember the way they work is you choose one

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location and all of your network traffic routes through it so if you wanted to

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say for example watch a ufc fight with that cheap german subscription while

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also streaming something from bbc you're fresh out of luck with the stream

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locator though you could have netflix from the uk and american amazon prime at

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the same time hooked up to your home theater screen just check out the services list toggle

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the options you want and you're all set speaking of home theaters by the way

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we've got a doozy of a video coming up where we're going to be testing HDMI 2.1

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cables from a ton of manufacturers to see who's lying and who's not make sure

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you're subscribed so you don't miss it if you're trying to maintain privacy for

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whatever reason a vpn is still an important piece of your toolkit and it

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should be noted that any device whose purpose is to sort through your internet

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traffic has inherent privacy risk associated with it you've got to kind of

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trust streamlocator because we don't have any way of guaranteeing that

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they're not benefiting from any kind of data collection i'd love to hear your

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guys's discussion about that in the comments below what we do know for sure is that for the

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price it's a really compelling package that does exactly what it says on the

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tin for 85 bucks which includes the first year of service after which it's

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seven dollars a month it really does unlock region locked content

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which is all fine and good but my lord

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is this legal

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well yes and maybe no their own website

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states the following the short answer yes of course stream locator is

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completely legal in 99 of the world

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which of course leaves out that one percent which could be a lot more than

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one percent because if you're living somewhere like china or iran which last

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time i checked is a lot more than one percent of the world you could very well

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be breaking laws by using this thing

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the good news for everyone else is that the worst case scenario is that right

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holders might get mad at streaming platforms for not geo-blocking their

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content effectively enough but that doesn't really sound like your problem

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does it what it does sound like is a segway to our sponsor zachary jackry

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wants to inspire an outdoors lifestyle so they're advertising online as tech

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tips because apparently they think we need to be reached they want people to

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be closer to nature and to live with a positive and energetic attitude and from

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september 20th to october 18th they are celebrating their ninth anniversary with

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a photo contest for a chance to win big prizes to enter all you have to do is

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take a picture of you exploring the outdoors and upload it to their campaign

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site all winners will be notified by email by october 29th and we're gonna

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have all the links down below seriously though guys if you're using a vpn and it

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works for you keep using it and if you like this video make sure you check out

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our video on how to browse the internet anonymously