How to use a VPN on Roku

The Roku sensible TV platform is an accessible technique to watch your favourite streaming content material in a centralized location – both built-in to TVs, or by including reasonably priced dongles or set-top bins to older televisions. Nonetheless, a standard frustration for any sensible TV or streaming service person is that a number of the greatest exhibits and films are inaccessible as a result of geo-restrictions.

Utilizing a VPN is a standard technique to deal with this difficulty, however in contrast to Hearth TV, Apple TV and different rivals, Roku techniques don’t have native VPN assist. However that’s not the top of the story: You possibly can nonetheless use a VPN to entry a wider vary of programming by way of a Roku — you simply want to make use of a workaround. We’ll present you ways.

The advantages of utilizing a VPN

On the subject of streaming, a VPN has one most important profit: altering your IP deal with. A VPN tunnels your connection via its servers to obfuscate your IP, making it seem to be you’re watching from elsewhere. Because of this, a service like Netflix will see your location as, say, the UK versus the US. You’ll then have entry to a special set of programming. For instance, the TV present Mates is on the market on Max within the US, nevertheless it’s solely accessible on Netflix within the UK.

VPNs have a number of different advantages associated to privateness and safety. VPN servers have military-grade AES 256-bit encryption, which means they’re safer than connecting to the Web usually. So, because you’re searching the Web by tunneling via the VPN, your Web service supplier can’t see all your searching locations (and promote your viewing habits to knowledge brokers).

The simplest approach to make use of a VPN on Roku

Though Roku doesn’t natively assist VPNs, there are just a few workarounds. You possibly can, as an example, set up a VPN on your home’s router. That lets you shield the entire community and each gadget that connects to it, maintaining everybody in your family nameless on-line. However it might additionally trigger confusion if you need to entry native providers — and it requires a really high-level of technical data, and solely works with sure routers.

As a substitute, we advocate a far simpler technique: connecting a VPN to your Roku by way of AirPlay or screencast. To do that, subscribe to a VPN and set up it in your smartphone or laptop computer. Then, stream content material on that gadget and AirPlay or screencast it to your Roku TV. The icon to do that ought to seem like a TV with Wi-Fi rays.

We favor this technique as a result of it’s less complicated general. You possibly can entry any geo-blocked content material in your smartphone or laptop computer first after which forged it in your sensible TV.

You may make certain your Roku mannequin is AirPlay-compatible by checking this resource on Roku’s site. If it isn’t, you’ll be able to all the time simply straight patch your telephone or laptop computer to the TV utilizing an HDMI cable or an appropriate dongle.