can Americans access netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc. in Europe
 

does anyone have experience with this? looks to me from a brief google search that these sites are usually blocked...collective wisdom appreciated

Yes, but it's a bit complicated

I use a VPN/ / proxy server to access similar UK based sites abroad and it works fine. For iPad I use teh Netshade app.

I travel with a laptop PC and have not been able to access any of these sites in Eurore. I checked with Amazon to see if I could watch any of their PRIME movies in Europe and was told they can not stream movies to Europe.

VPN works very well for me. Put it on your device before leaving the US, and it will let you use your Netflix, Amazon Video, etc. accounts as if you were still in the States.

I'm told it also gives you some protection if you do on-line banking, check credit card accounts and so on.

I use Strong VPN and like their customer service-- you can LiveChat with them if you have problems overseas and they will tinker with your account till it works.

You can access Netlfix no problem in the UK because it's licensed there but elsewhere in Europe you'll need to route through a proxy server.

Netflix is also available in the Netherlands, but it does not carry the same programming as US or UK Netflix. I am not sure you could access it with your US subscription. Safer to use a proxy as others have already suggested.

A VPN will connect you but if you are staying in hotels, you may have bandwidth issues if you use wifi rather than 4G.

Two or three people using high bandwidth applications can crash a hotel network or make it v-e-r-y slow for everyone in the building, even in the States.

Some public wifi sites throttle bandwidth. One I use regularly prevents video, jpegs, or music from downloading, though you can do email or read all day.

thanks so much this is so helpful

Use a VPN. I like strongvpn.com. Reliable. Easy to use. Affordable. We used it while living in Europe and now use it for a European IP address to get NFL Gamepass.

There are several types of VPN. Some works better than others.

PPTP,L2TP are natively supported on most devices including tablets and smartphones. However, I had many hotels block these protocols.

I have not had OpenVPN using SSL blocked anywhere in Europe. However, this is not natively supported by smartphone and tablet OSs. Usually you only get PC or MAC implementations. When I want the first segment protection, I always take my PC with me and use the OpenVPN protocol.

One gotcha I found with VPN is that since VPN traffic get funneled through limited number of VPN servers, some sites consider VPN traffics as intrusion attacks coming form one computer and block accesses.