Sorry to say, but you can't watch Hulu with Hot Spot Shield anymore! Since Hulu's release in 2008, international viewers have been trying to find ways to view watch Hulu outside The USA. Hulu, because of copyright and ownership laws has from the beginning blocked streaming Hulu from viewers outside The USA. They are able to do this by blocking IP address that originate from countries other than America. The IP address of your computer is unique to your computer only, and your exact location can be found out by the address. By blocking IP's outside of The USA, Hulu was able to prevent users without permission from viewing accessing their service.

Very quickly international viewers figured out that with a proxy, you could watch Hulu regardless of where you were. A proxy works like this. Let's say you want to view a web site. Instead of sending information directly from your computer to the web site, information from your computer is first sent to another computer, after which it is sent off to the destination you originally intended it to go to. Companies may use this for security of private information or protection from viruses and malware, and individuals may use this to surf the internet anonymously because information from your original IP address is not detectable after it passes through the proxy. The most popular and one of the most reliable of these proxies was Hot Spot Shield.

Hot Spot Shield was probably so popular because it was free. Many users were and still are flocking to Hulu not just because of the high quality, popular TV it provides directly to your computer screen, but much more so because it's free. Who wants to pay to be able to access a free service right?

However, Hot Spot Shield's hay-day was quickly over when Hulu began to block proxies. Anonymous proxy servers, though they can change your IP address, are easily detectable and blocked. So again, in an effort to protect their copyright agreements, Hulu blocked Hot Spot Shield and other anonymous proxy servers. Even today, if you try to access Hulu with a proxy, (even if you're in The USA), you will get a message saying that you are not allowed to stream Hulu from a proxy. This is proof that Hulu cannot see your original IP when you use a proxy, but they can detect proxies.

So now, instead of Hot Spot Shield and other proxies, users are tuning to VPN's. A VPN, although on many sites is referred to side by side with proxy, is something very different. A vpn codes, packs, and tunnels your information before sending it to a secure network server, before it decodes, unpacks, and sends your information off to it's original location. This not only gives you the desired IP address to view Hulu (if the server is in The USA), but also means that Hulu is unable to detect that you're using such services.

Even today there are many sites that try and promote the use of Hot Spot Shield as a way to watch Hulu outside The USA, but the truth is that you can only watch Hulu from an American IP address, and the only way to get an American IP address outside of The USA is with a vpn service for Hulu.