Unblock-Us

Falling behind.

One of the earliest Smart DNS services, UnblockUs was also one of the first to receive the wrath of the Netflix ban hammer. From our testing, it still hasn’t managed to overcome that ban, and Netflix is still inaccessible with the service, which is obviously a huge black mark against it. However, the other services we tested, including Hulu, all worked perfectly, with smooth playback at high resolution.

Unfortunately, the configuration and testing system is a mess. There’s an appreciable number of features, including wide region selection for services and DynDNS automatic IP address registration, but they’re buried deep behind a help system in which entire pages are missing and errors are frequent.

Still, there are positives: there are easy setup and management apps for people for whom DNS configuration is challenging. It automatically tells you which DNS server to use based on your location, and uses border gateway protocol to automatically route you to a local server. In our case, the ping result was a very good 118ms, indicating fast DNS response times.

The list of supported services is also very impressive. Most Australian, US and UK catch-up TV services are supported, as are most of the major subscription streaming services. Music channels like Pandora and iHeart Radio are there as well as a surprising selection of French TV channels.

Whether those are enough to make up for Netflix and the janky controls largely depends on what you’re after. As with the other smart DNS services, Getflix still generally seems like a better deal.