Cutting the cable/satellite cord

[Arvoreen]

I have heard lots of good things about Kodi (https://kodi.tv/download/ - used to be xbmc) and the Exodus plugin (https://www.tvaddons.ag/kodi-addons/show/plugin.video.exodus/).

[viper37]

Kodi is great.  Anything from TVaddons falls either into a very grey area or downright illegal.
Although you may not need it, a VPN is highly recommended to use these streaming sites.

I think they way it works in the US, is anything you can catch with over-the-air HD antenna is free to download, but stuff on cable is obviously not free.

[Berkut]

Why would one want a VPN?

[Grey Fox]

Not get sued.

[viper37]

Why would one want a VPN?

When downloading torrents, law firms specializing in copyright cases are "snooping" the packets transmitted from popular trackers.
When they see your IP adress, they asked the ISP for your coordinates, and in the US, they are mandated by law to transmit all your personal information.  They now also have the right to sell everything about you to advertisers, but that's another debate.

Bottom line is, law firms monitor torrent site, they see IP 268.28.29.207 downloading "Rogue One Blu Ray 4k BD-RIP" (they have algorythms to search for these downloads), they submit a request to your ISP to identify the owner of this IP adress at the the time of the download, then they ask Disney and/or the MPAA if they can sue you on their behalf, and in many cases, in the US, they will.  Or they will sue the ISP and the ISP will sue you.

So a VPN will protect your identity.  When such a request is sent to the ISP, they will send them the coordinates the VPN server has returned, not yours.  Good VPNs don't keep any logs.


If you do things legally, there is of course no need to bother with a VPN.  Except if you don't like your name, adress, phone number, e-mail and browsing habits to be sold to a 3rd party.

[Barrister]

If you do things legally, there is of course no need to bother with a VPN.  Except if you don't like your name, adress, phone number, e-mail and browsing habits to be sold to a 3rd party.

Disagree.  If one wants to get around region-locking, but for services that are otherwise legal and legitimate, you may wish to get a VPN.  E.g. you want to get access to Netflix's catalogue in a different country, you want to view British tv shows locked to the UK-only, to get around region restrictions on your NHL/MLB account, that sort of thing.

[Berkut]

Is this a hardware VPN typically? Something sitting between your modem and router?

[Barrister]

Is this a hardware VPN typically? Something sitting between your modem and router?

Wife got a software VPN to get around Canadian Netflix.

[viper37]

If you do things legally, there is of course no need to bother with a VPN.  Except if you don't like your name, adress, phone number, e-mail and browsing habits to be sold to a 3rd party.

Disagree.  If one wants to get around region-locking,

That is totally illegal as per US and international copyright rules. Even if it's not available here, you can't use any methods to circumvent geo block.
It's still technically illegal in Canada, I guess, but there's a ruling on that, so it's not really enforced and the government has been unable to come up with a new solution that would protect consumer rights and copyrights holders.

but it is still nominally illegal.  You just won't get such a case on your desk anytime soon.

E.g. you want to get access to Netflix's catalogue in a different country, you want to view British tv shows locked to the UK-only, to get around region restrictions on your NHL/MLB account, that sort of thing.

That is against Netflix official policy.  And against the NHL/MLB rules since they gave media contracts to specific services for specific regions.

As I said, you don't really need a VPN for legal and legitimate reasons, outside of protecting your privacy from advertising.

[viper37]

Is this a hardware VPN typically? Something sitting between your modem and router?

Just a software one.
You can get a comparison and reviews of some services here:
https://www.bestvpn.com/best-vpn-services/

[Arvoreen]

There is a reddit thread on this topic also : https://www.reddit.com/r/VPN/comments/5lwze3/rvpn_recommendations_megathread/  with a link to pretty comprehensive spreadsheet comparing various VPN providers

[viper37]

Very nice site.  A bit misleading about cooperation though.
What's important are the DNS leaks and logging.  If your VPN provider does not keep logs and protects you against DNS leaks, you will generally be safe.