Watch Amazon US in UK?

Eliot

Eliot

Eliot

Soldato
Joined
29 Mar 2005
Posts
5,792
Hive mind.

Lets work this out...

Inspired by the terrible picture quality of GOT in the UK this season, due to SKY compressing the living daylights out of it I have been looking into how to improve this as EP3 on my OLED was SAD...

Anyway, My investigation tells me that Amazon Prime in the US has GOT on it (via HBO sub) and is twice the bitrate (not amazing but absolutely an improvement)

So, naturally have begun to explore how I can get Amazon Prime US working in the UK, the second step would be then how to get a HBO sub (maybe more complicated, maybe just charging it to a Revolut card or something with a fake address)

Anyway,

Firstly, has anyone got this working for them?
My ideal situation would be to configure a VPN on my ASUS AC86U, Pinned to the IP of say, my Roku box and establish that in the US.

That may be enough to get Amazon Prime working? (anyone tried anything similar)

Other option I guess is to use a laptop connected via HDMI, not as clean, but potentially more options with tweaking the connection, in terms of using Unlocator or similar apps.

My assumption is this is a OK topic of discussion as in the Console games forum, purchases from foreign stores are regularly discussed and involve similar effort
 
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A VPN might not work - Netflix has the ability to detect when it's passing through a VPN; though it's luck of the drawer it seems, as they will have a list of IPs associated with VPN services, so you might be lucky and use one that isn't know yet.

I used NordVPN at home on our FireTV 4K and Nvidia Shield - but Netflix is always able to spot when we're trying to tell it we're in the US. A suggested solution, is to load DDWrt onto my router and set the VPN on that - apparently that will work, but I've not tried it.
 
VPN's don't tend to work these days with streaming services. they all have protection in place to detect them and then they block the IP address.

as VPN services tend to share the same IP with millions of customers therefore if Amazon see 1 million requests for different accounts from a single IP address. it gets banned.
 
Eliot said:
Hive mind.

Lets work this out...

Inspired by the terrible picture quality of GOT in the UK this season, due to SKY compressing the living daylights out of it I have been looking into how to improve this as EP3 on my OLED was SAD...

Anyway, My investigation tells me that Amazon Prime in the US has GOT on it (via HBO sub) and is twice the bitrate (not amazing but absolutely an improvement)

So, naturally have begun to explore how I can get Amazon Prime US working in the UK, the second step would be then how to get a HBO sub (maybe more complicated, maybe just charging it to a Revolut card or something with a fake address)

Anyway,

Firstly, has anyone got this working for them?
My ideal situation would be to configure a VPN on my ASUS AC86U, Pinned to the IP of say, my Roku box and establish that in the US.

That may be enough to get Amazon Prime working? (anyone tried anything similar)

Other option I guess is to use a laptop connected via HDMI, not as clean, but potentially more options with tweaking the connection, in terms of using Unlocator or similar apps.

My assumption is this is a OK topic of discussion as in the Console games forum, purchases from foreign stores are regularly discussed and involve similar effort
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deleted as while it may or may not be a spoiler, not worth risking it

we won't have it this bad again. it won't be great but it won't be unwatchable either.

just wait for the blu rays rather than streaming it. the HBO stream will have the same issues.
 
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Psycho Sonny said:
deleted as while it may or may not be a spoiler, not worth risking it

we won't have it this bad again. it won't be great but it won't be unwatchable either.

just wait for the blu rays rather than streaming it. the HBO stream will have the same issues.
Click to expand...

It's a lot better, Sky is pretty bad for the quality they put out. They don't even have the excuse of satellite bandwidth any more as you can download it instead.

Not perfect, still had issues with the dark scenes and tbh I think even Bluray quality won't make a difference on some TV's but Sky really do take the mick with both OTA and streaming quality.
 
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Eliot said:
Inspired by the terrible picture quality of GOT in the UK this season, due to SKY compressing the living daylights out of it I have been looking into how to improve this as EP3 on my OLED was SAD...
Click to expand...
fill us in - I have never watched GOT ... but sky are running the same average 15Mb/s 4k and 8Mb/s FHD as netflix/hbo/usa no ?

- and may even distribute the same licensed stream, albeit, they may have some dynamic bitrate control, to accomodate simultaneous high action scenes on channels on the same satellite mux, but does that really kill it. ?

EDIT : ok seems to be an oled specific problem - the macroblocking issue for which owners still waiting for a fix, like previous problems with shows like vikings.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/fl...date-lgs-fw-fix-now-available.2204059/page-45
The latest episode of Game of Thrones is a macroblocking horror show. There are huge clouds of macroblocking even on actors faces, because the episode is very dark. Latest firmware here. I don’t think it’s ever going to be fixed, it’s an OLED issue. Seen it on a galaxy s7 and xiaomi mi 8. LG can only mask the issue by messing with the near blacks, but not entirely.
 
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jpaul said:
fill us in - I have never watched GOT ... but sky are running the same average 15Mb/s 4k and 8Mb/s FHD as netflix/hbo/usa no ?

- and may even distribute the same licensed stream, albeit, they may have some dynamic bitrate control, to accomodate simultaneous high action scenes on channels on the same satellite mux, but does that really kill it. ?

EDIT : ok seems to be an oled specific problem - the macroblocking issue for which owners still waiting for a fix, like previous problems with shows like vikings.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/fl...date-lgs-fw-fix-now-available.2204059/page-45
The latest episode of Game of Thrones is a macroblocking horror show. There are huge clouds of macroblocking even on actors faces, because the episode is very dark. Latest firmware here. I don’t think it’s ever going to be fixed, it’s an OLED issue. Seen it on a galaxy s7 and xiaomi mi 8. LG can only mask the issue by messing with the near blacks, but not entirely.
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I don't think it is, I have a feeling those guys are a bit lost...


I have tried so many sources on my OLED and have not ever witnessed any of what they were talking about except on GOT this week.
The Light areas within the dark were terrible too.
 
This is where HDR would have made a difference. I'm using a Sony XE9305 and GoT always looks fantastic. I know there were complaints about Monday's episode and I feel that if you were trying to watch this on even something mid-range you would have had problems, the dark scenes would have just been crushed and bled. I was able to see most what was going on.
With good HDR there, the contrast between the whitest whites and blackest blacks would have made everything look so much better.
 
Indeed comments I scanned on avforums suggest 4k/hdr content is less impacted - whether it's down to the 10bits, or higher avg bitrates
https://www.avforums.com/threads/wh...cking-in-streams-not-being-discussed.2210431/
is none of got in hdr ... given it's popularity ?

@Eliot a utube trailer thatr may show same issues
jpaul said:
looked at the Marvel 4K trailer https://youtu.be/LEAKH-cGbs0?t=19 ?

It's not 10bit/hdr material , just 8bit/sdr/rec709 so should be fine on an 8 bit panel
I see posterization/haloing... on older 8 bit panasonic, so I think this is just par for the course
it's just poor 15Mb/s streamed material (converted from hdr ?) ... maybe those with a 10 bit oleds will comment on what they see. ?
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