Hulu Live TV requires certain devices like Rokus to run on a “home” network/IP address. I would like to be able to watch Hulu Live TV when I am not at home, but the Roku app tells me I have to change my home location. Unfortunately, I’ve maxed out the number of times I can do that. It means I just can’t use the Roku unless I’m physically at my house and on my home WiFi.
I have a UniFi Dream Machine Pro with the capability to customize my home network significantly. But I’m learning on the fly.
What is the technical term for what I need to do to run the Roku (or different media player) through my home IP address so Hulu believes I am at home?
What subscriptions do I need?
Please point me to a guide or YouTube video for a how-to explanation.
You will need to setup a VPN on your Unifi Dream Machine Pro, then connect your device to your VPN. It should now be showing as “within your home network”
Keep in mind you will need sufficient upload bandwidth to stream while on the VPN into your home. I do this regularly but have AT&T 1gig fiber so it’s usually very smooth.
You need to set up a VPN server on the Dream Machine. Here is a helpful guide on how to do so.
Note: You can’t set up a private VPN on Rokus. The workaround, however, is to buy a travel router (GL.iNet is a name I hear frequently when discussing such a topic), which you can upload your VPN configuration to, hook it into a local network (say, at a hotel, or one of your friends’ houses, even your phone), and then so long as your devices remain connected to the travel router, they will appear to whatever website you visit as though you’re connected to your home network.
You can get a small travel router that supports vpn connectivity like a mikrotik mAP and set it up to rebroadcast your home wifi ssid and vpn back to your house automatically. That is what I do with mine.
Will this overcome the issue of providers such as ESPN etc. that block based on VPN detection? i presume it should because it will not be a block of known IPs that commercial VPN providers use, correct?
Note that this is not your usual commercially available/offered VPN service like Nord or ExpressVPN. This is setting up a VPN to connect to your home network. Once you are in your home network, your public/internet facing address will now be your ISP-provided one.
They do restrict the live tv portion on my Roku devices. Like I can’t take them with me and use them anywhere. But they don’t restrict pc browsers or phones.
I think this is where I was getting hung up. I understood VPN to mean I would be placed in a region, not at home. Sounds like VPNs can be multiple things
I doubt most streaming services are over 10Mb or at most 20Mb. You might run into some problems with buffer bloat if you saturate your upload but streaming doesn’t really require that much bandwith.
I googled it and at least their streaming library seems to be 6Mbps or less. That means it might just work well with a bit over 10Mb. You definitely don’t need anything close to a gig.
You can stream selections from Hulu’s streaming library in the following resolutions and minimum bitrates: Standard Definition (SD): 1.5 Mbps. High Definition (HD) 720p*: 3 Mbps. High Definition (HD) 1080p: 6 Mbps.
Live streams are never 4K there it seems but I don’t know since I’ve never even seen Hulu.
Virtual Private Networks were meant to allow a user to connect remotely to a Local Area Network. These were primarily used by companies to extend their network interconnectivity, across different locations and across different user base.
Back in the day (and to date), companies had to pay a LOT of money to lease dedicated lines from telco to ensure they have high speed interconnectivity across different locations. VPN (P2P and C2S) solutions were cheaper alternatives to leased lines.
The VPNs offered by 3rd party companies today are meant to utilize the same capabilities, to allow them to connect to different networks they pre-built across different locations/regions, but not necessarily to access resources within these networks, but more so to “mask” subscriber’s IP addresses and make them look like they are on a different region. They are able to provide these services as computing resources becomes cheaper due to the prevalence of public cloud computing.
In my experience I had devices that would regularly utilize the upload link so if you have only 10Mb then only 2-5 would be available for use. Let us know how it goes OP