The lawsuit was filed last Thursday in U.S District Court of Massachusetts. The NAD feels that Netflix has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing captions for most of its “watch instantly” move and television content.

There are over 36 million Americans alone who are deaf or hard of hearing. According to the National Association of the Deaf, many of these people have already brought this issue to the attention of Netflix by sending letters, writing blogs and signing petitions that urge the site to provide equal access to its streaming content. The group says that Netflix, despite all of the complaints and requests by NAD members, has so far only set up captions on a small number of the overall titles on its “watch instantly” service.
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that “places of entertainment” provide “full and equal enjoyment” for people with disabilities, says NAD. They are asking the court to declare Netflix in violation of the Act and are hoping the court orders the company to provide captions on all streaming content. NAD President Bobbie Beth Scoggins made this statement:

“We have tried for years to persuade Netflix to do the right thing and provide equal access to all content across all platforms. They chose not to serve our community on an equal basis; we must have equal access to the biggest provider of streamed entertainment. As Netflix itself acknowledges, streamed video is the future and we must not be left out.”

There is some question as to whether or not Netflix has truly been ignoring this community’s need and it should be interesting to see what comes to light during this case. In a blog post back in February (long before the lawsuit), Neil Hunt, the company’s chief product officer, said that about 30% of the streaming content available at Netflix had subtitles available and that he expected to see an increase of up to 80% by the end of this year. Much earlier, in a blog post from 2009, Hunt had suggested that there were technical difficulties challenging their progress with subtitles.

The NAD lawsuit contends that the process of captioning is both technically possible and relatively simple to achieve.
It remains to be seen how the courts will rule on this case. Netflix is not a traditional “place” such as a video store you can walk into or a theater. So does it constitute a place of entertainment under the law? Netflix is an online business and one has to wonder if the courts will rule that it comes under the jurisdiction of the ADA or not. Either way, one certainly hopes they endeavor to make all of their products easily accessible to the NAD community.

4K videos raise the bar by running in a resolution of 4096 x 3072, that’s almost four times the size of the full HD resolution.

But 4K videos raise the bar not only resolution wise. The hardware requirements to play those movies on Youtube have gone up a lot.

Youtube visitors need a ultra-fast broadband connection and a computer system capable of displaying the videos smoothly in the web browser.

First user comments in the official announcement mention that the videos are not running properly on their computer systems.

Youtube 4k

But then again, it does not make lots of sense anyway to run 4K videos on a netbook screen or on a computer screen considering that the best screen size for 4K video is 24 feet, according to Youtube that is.

Our Core-i7 860 test system that’s connected with 50 Mbit
to the Internet was able to display the videos smoothly.

The test videos in 4K resolution are available here on Youtube. They are currently not offered for HTML5 Beta users, only Flash users are able to select the Original resolution to watch the movies in 4K.

4k videos youtube

We all know that resolution is not everything, a low bitrate can turn a 4K resolution video in an unpleasant experience. The sample videos seem to suffer from a low bitrate. What’s your take on the 4K addition? Good move or publicity stunt?

The messages that users receive when trying to view contents from outside the allowed countries are vast, some examples are this video is not available in your country or this video contains content from [company name] who has decided to block it in your country which both indicate that the publisher has limited access to users from specific countries.

If you search the Internet for solutions you find many different approaches to bypass the country restrictions on Youtube. Most of the solutions might have worked in the past but do not work anymore. Here is what is not working anymore:

• Replacing the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxx url with http://www.youtube.com/v/=NIyiOB64fc8.
• Using translation services like Google Translate or Babel Fish. This usually yields the error message “an error occurred, please try again later.

Lets cover the basics. Youtube checks the user’s IP address, looks it up to find out the country the user is living in and compares it to the allowed country listing. If the country is in the list the user is allowed to watch the video, if not an error message is displayed explaining that the video is not available in the user’s country.

Several solutions are available to overcome the country restrictions on Youtube, all make use of proxy or intermediary services to hide the user’s IP address.

Test Videos:

• US: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q05bdFtERjM
• UK: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=luuX1nAd17A

1. Using a VPN

A VPN is a virtual private network which offers secure connections between computer systems. The important aspect for this guide is the fact that all web services and websites will communicate with the IP of the VPN which then routes the traffic to the user PC. If the IP of the VPN is located in a country that is allowed to watch the video then the video can be watched by the user as well.

VPNs often offer access to different servers to reduce the latency. We have been using VyprVPN in our tests, a VPN service that is offered for free for Giganews Diamond account owners. It offers servers in the US and NL currently (so no UK video access).

Free VPN services may work as well but they usually restrict the traffic of free users. Hotspot Shield and Project Loki are two services that offer free VPN connections. You may need to narrow down the search to find a VPN with servers in a country that is on the Youtube video’s country whitelist.

If you open the US video from outside the United States you receive the following error message on Youtube.

video blocked in your country

If you now connect to a US VPN you can watch the video without problems.

unblock youtube videos

Virtual private networks are great to watch videos hassle free. The free VPN solutions are usually very restrictive and slow. Setup and signup makes this an elegant but time consuming option to view blocked Youtube videos.

2. Download the video

Youtube video download services can be very helpful. They allow the user to download the video to the local computer to watch it there. The website offering the service needs to be hosted in a country that is on the whitelist for that video.

• US: Zamzar or File2HD
• UK: ?

youtube video download

Most video download services do not work even if they are located in a country that is on the video’s whitelist. Especially download services that are using a Java applet to download the videos did not work during our tests.

We were not able to find a single working UK video download service. If you know one let us know.

The option to download Youtube videos should be seen as a last resort. The method does have its advantages though, namely that the video can be watched for as long as it is stored on the local PC.

3. Web Proxies

Web proxies are proxies on websites that sit between the user’s computer and the target website. Selecting a web proxy from the right country should in theory be sufficient to play videos that are blocked in the user’s country.

Most web proxies on the other hand do not work. The message that is usually displayed on the Youtube video page reads “an error occurred, please try again later. Out of the 50 web proxies that we have tried only two have been working.

• US: Anonymous Browser
• UK: Action Access

unblock bbc youtube videos

Web proxies are great since they can be used to watch the blocked Youtube videos directly.

Proxy Server

Proxy servers need to be configured in the web browser’s settings. They route all web browser connections through their server. The destination websites interact only with the proxy server which means that the IP of the server is used to determine whether content is shown or not.

Proxies come and go as quickly – if not quicker – than web proxies. Proxy checkers like Charon can be used to verify a large list of proxy servers at once. It is possible to verify servers manually but that would mean to enter the proxy server’s information in the web browser before testing it to see if pages are loaded which is a time consuming process.

Here is a list of sites that post fresh proxies. There are more out there, just search for free proxy list, proxy server list or US proxy server.

Proxy servers need to be anonymous. Some proxy servers are not. These transparent proxies spill the user IP which has the consequence that blocked videos will remain blocked.

• http://www.samair.ru/proxy/type-01.htm
• http://www.proxylist.net/
• http://www.proxy-list.net/
• http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html

There is also a risk involved in using those proxy servers. All data will be routed through the servers for as long as the proxy is activated in the browser. It is theoretically possible to intercept that data to use it for malicious activities. Not a big problem when viewing Youtube videos though.

Do you know of another way to view blocked Youtube videos? Let us know in the comments. Have a service that should be included in the article? Post it in the comments as well and we take a look at it.

TubeMaster (via Download online video using TubeMaster Plus) is one of those applications. The portable application supports more than 100 video portals including the ever popular Youtube and Dailymotion but also some unsuspected ones like Hulu, IGN or ESPN. Not all web video portals could be tested because some will only show the videos to users of specific countries. A test of downloading web video from Hulu would be greatly appreciated.

The application uses its own browser that can be used to display the video portal websites. Videos will be automatically downloaded when they are played on the portal. This is unfortunately the only way to download videos from the various websites.

It is still a comfortable way to download web video. Besides the option to load the websites directly users can also use the search engine included to search for various on single or all web video websites.

A maximum of 500 search results can be displayed. The videos cannot be downloaded directly from the search. A click displays additional information about the selected web video and an option to load the video on the video portal’s website from where it will be automatically downloaded when it starts playing.

Another option is the mp3 search which leaves the user in the dark from where the files are coming. Quicktime is needed to play and download the mp3.

Videos can be automatically decoded which is the default option in TubeMaster. The user can choose between various video codecs and stop the conversion.

Tubemaster supports adult web video sites as well but that option is locked for users who subscribe to the service. Downloading from the “normal” web video portals is completely free though.

Anime is a form of Japanese animation that is primarily directed to an older audience. It has a large fan following and some of the shows actually have a pretty well developed storyline. The only downside is that anime is available only a few select television channels.

For anime fans who cannot get a fix of their favorite show on TV, the internet offers hope. Just like TV shows, most anime is also uploaded to online video-sharing sites. It can be quite irksome to search for a single show or episode though. Thankfully, Crawlanime does all the hard work for you.

Crawlanime is an indexing site for anime. The site has a pretty comprehensive list of anime videos all over the internet. The site lists anime in decreasing order of available videos. This means shows with the highest number of videos are displayed first. If you’re looking for something specific though, you can always use the index on the left side of the page.

Clicking on a show opens up a page with all the available episodes. Once you select an episode, a new page opens up, with the links. The initial links all go to Veoh, which are usually the 5-minute previews and require you to have VeohTv to watch them. But if you scroll down, you will come to links from other video-sharing sites, most notably YouTube and Dailymotion.

Crawlanime provides hours of entertainment, especially if you’re into anime. I’d like to see the site have a small stat counter that tells people which are the most viewed videos. That way, new users can check out popular shows and decide if it’s for them.

What do you think of Crawlanime? Do you know of any other anime indexing sites? How do you think the availability of anime online affects broadcasters and TV channels? Let me know in the comments.