[Review] UnoTelly SmartDNS and VPN
Disclosure: UnoTelly have provided me with a complimentary lifetime account for this review.
TV in New Zealand is not up to the standard for most people. Television shows are usually outdated; shows are being aired here after a couple of months after it has been aired in the US, but nevertheless this is slowly starting to improve. Still, most users for this reason like to consume media content “on-demand”, on their own computer/TV/tablet/smartphone, right in their own home on their couches. But these streaming sites i.e Netflix and Hulu, are only available overseas but not in NZ. But don’t fret, UnoTelly have come to save the day!
UnoTelly unlocks TV, film and music not available in your current geographic location. Their apparent catalogue of working sites comes to over 250 channels, with more being added as they become available. They include the Australian Open, BBC Iplayer, Beats Music, Livestream NRL and more. You can view all their supported channels here.
Apart from supporting a lot of channels, they also support a lot of different devices too. UnoTelly works on any PC, Mac, Linux, media streaming device, game console and mobile device. To be honest, I was quite surprised at the extensive list of devices supported by UnoTelly!
How UnoTelly’s Smart DNS works is when you access one of their supported media content in a geographically-locked country, UnoTelly transparently creates a network tunnel from your actual location to their servers in the corresponding country. This then assigns your computer an IP address to that media content’s country, effectively telling them that you are in one of their geographically-supported countries. This means you are then able to watch that content now.
A lot of people wonder if this is legal or not, and I can tell you that at the time of writing, it is legal in New Zealand, but you may be breaching the content provider’s Terms and Conditions and/or Fair Use policies.
Setting up the UnoTelly SmartDNS was pretty simple because of the onscreen instructions that told you step-by-step with screenshots, how to input their DNS servers on your devices. Because you are only needing to change the DNS servers, nearly all internet-capable devices that can access streaming content can do this. DNS settings are usually found in the network connection settings (the settings where you attempt to connect to the internet).
To test out the actual service, I tried playing a kid’s TV show on Hulu. I’m on ADSL2+ and there was absolutely no stoppage for buffering through the entire 20 minutes of the show, including all the ads that were shown before my eyes…
Another feature in UnoTelly’s Smart DNS is Dynamo. Dynamo lets you change regions of your favourite channels. For example, you can choose between 14 Netflix regions and access their unique respective contents by using Dynamo.
Some of the competitor’s services usually limit your bandwidth and/or access to streaming services, but UnoTelly doesn’t. For only a fixed fee of US$4.95 (~NZ$6) per month you have 100% unlimited UnoDNS access.
UnoTelly not only has a UnoDNS for accessing media content, but also has a VPN with PPTP and OpenVPN protocol with servers in the US, UK, Canada, Netherlands and recently added Germany for completely hiding your identity on your computer. This feature costs an additional US$3 per month and has to be bought with the UnoDNS package, coming to a total cost of US$7.95 (~NZ$10) per month.
Once signed up you will be provided with a UnoVPN username and password to use when logging in to the VPN.
I am currently logged in to the US VPN server and this is the current speeds I’m getting on ADSL2+ via Ethernet cable:
Also to remember is that you should disconnect from any VPN after use because I have made the mistake a couple of times and have recklessly blamed Sky TV for why SkyGo isn’t working; solution was to turn off VPN!
This will be a great addition for when I head overseas on holiday to China at the end of this year for when I want to access a lot of blocked content over there e.g Facebook and Twitter.
Last thing I also want to mention is their helpdesk and support. Their knowledge base portal is very extensive and provides a lot of helpful information for people who need it. At first, parts of their website were “disjointed” meaning that one link on their main page did not link to the proper link on another page, but I think that has been sorted now. You can check out their knowledge base here if you need any help with setting anything up.
For more information or to enjoy unlimited overseas TV (some overseas TV providers may need payment too), please visit: http://unotelly.com/
