Courtesy of Lifehacker, here are a couple of top 5 lists:

-Five Best Media Center Applications

-Five Best Media Converters

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Like many, I was a big fan of Pandora before access outside of the United States was revoked due to apparent licensing constraints. I also wish Canada had a similar service to Hulu, a free online television station founded by NBC and News Corp, although I’m not sure why anyone would want to watch reruns of Little Mosque on the Prairie or The Border, but I digress.

After several failed attempts to access either service via proxy servers (such as Tor), I finally decided to try a VPN solution. Enter WiTopia’s PersonalVPN. For a very affordable $40 per year, these guys have done a wonderful job at simplifying the heck out of an OpenVPN installation, which provides the end-user with a secure connection to their servers. But more importantly (well, more so for this particular case), the user obtains a U.S. IP address, making your connection to Hulu and Pandora appear like a local one. Problem solved!

Furthermore, I use a program called PlayOn by MediaMall Technologies to stream Hulu (and YouTube & ESPN) to my Xbox 360. It is currently in public beta and free for 21 days. I’ve had no issues thus far, but please note that the PlayOn service has to be stopped prior to connecting to PersonalVPN, and then restarted, or else it just obtains your non-U.S. IP and spits a “content not available outside of the U.S.” error message. MediaMall has not made public when the final version will be released or at what cost, but I can’t imagine it will be more than $30.

I will be posting a few more Xbox 360 tips down the road, including how to stream HD content from your PC, including 1080p .MKV files. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Hotspot Shield also works the same way and it’s free. So I’ll probably not renew my PersonalVPN subscription next year and just stick with the freebie.

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