Another rainy morning which didn’t yield until late afternoon which, once again, hampered plans to explore more of Suzhou. So what’s a guy supposed to do? Figure out how to stream the Golden State Warriors game, of course!
First up, I needed to subscribe to a new VPN as the one I was previously using (TunnelBear) was just not reliable enough here in China, nor would it allow me to stream Netflix on my laptop — I could on my cell phone, sometimes — and I could not get it to work on my five year old iPad. After a bit of research I settled on trying ExpressVPN and, let me tell you, that was a great choice! Not only can I now stream Netflix on my laptop, it works on my iPad *and* you can choose from multiple servers within the United States — meaning you can set your location where you’re supposedly physically located(“spoof”); more on that later as to why you’d want to do that.
Shameless plug: If you’re looking for a VPN solution, use this link to sign up for ExpressVPN so this shameless blogged can get some bones thrown his way! And if you’re trying to understand why you might want to use a VPN when living in a non-censored country, watch this 90 second video.
Before leaving San Francisco, I knew there were a few options for streaming TV over the internet. The obvious provider is Hulu, but for some reason I just don’t like Hulu. There’s no rhyme or reason to that choice, it’s just me being me. SlingTV is the new kid on the block so I figured I’d give them a try. After connecting to my ExpressVPN account, I went through the sign-up process for SlingTV. Well, I *almost* went through the process. Step 3 (of 3) asked for a credit card number to finalize the setup. No problem! I entered my card number and it was rejected. What??? Ok, so let me try that again. Same result. And a third time with a different card produced the same result. Not sure what the issue was, but right then and there SlingTV lost my business. Time for Plan B, and I don’t mean RU-486.
Since I wanted to stream ESPN for the Warriors game, I had to find a provider that has that channel and preferably one that has ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPN3 as well so I can watch college football this fall. It didn’t take too long to figure out that YouTube TV has those channels plus MSNBC (Hello, Rachel Maddow!). To make things even better, YouTube TV throws in a free DVR type service (SlingTV charges extra for that) *and* they accepted my credit card. Things were up and running with only a few minutes of the game being missed.
Now why was it a good thing that ExpressVPN allows you to choose certain locations in the USA to spoof your physical location? Well, as it turns out, with YouTube TV you can watch “local” channels — ABC, CBS, NBC — provided you’re “physically” in that market. With ExpressVPN I can set my location to LA, SF, Seattle, NYC … meaning there’s a good chance I can watch some SF Giants games or Seattle Sounders matches if they’re on one of those channels! Yee haw! SPORTS!
It should be no surprise that today’s word of the day is 技术 (Jìshù), meaning technology.
