Thanks to the successful series “Game of Thrones” the interest in the US channel HBO is enormous. The station cannot be received in Germany, and Netflix usually searches in vain for HBO content. The streaming service HBO Nordic, which you can also receive from Germany with a trick, can help here.
In the home territory of the USA, HBO provides customers of the Kabel TV service with all content in an online media library for streaming via “HBO Go”. Due to the lack of a US cable connection, German users cannot access this content. In Scandinavia, HBO Nordic is an equivalent offer – with the difference that no cable connection is required. The service costs less than 9 Euro per month and can be used free of charge for the first 30 days. How you at HBO Nordic stream all HBO series in the original English sound from Germany is explained below.
Tip: With HBO Now, HBO provides a platform for its own productions. In a separate article we’ll explain how you can stream content from HBO Now in Germany.
Adapt IP address to HBO with Unblock-US or Nord VPN
HBO Nordic is available in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. An IP address from one of these countries is therefore required for access. The reason for this is the Geo-IP block mentioned above.
Unblock-US: Functionality and Setup
The easiest way to get the corresponding address is to use the Unblock-US service – don’t let the name irritate you. For a price of less than 3.70 euros per month, the service provides a SmartDNS – the little brother of the VPN server – for access to many streaming services, including for HBO Nordic.
Unblock-US uses a DNS principle which allows the service to recognize when it is necessary to redirect your data via HBO-compatible VPN servers. All you have to do is adjust the DNS settings of your streaming device. Take Netflix as an example to see how the technology behind Unblock-US works.
Alternatively, you can find out in the following articles whether a SmartDNS or VPN service is suitable for you. There we will list the most common services, show you the advantages and disadvantages of the different techniques and compare the services with each other.
How to change your DNS settings to the servers of Unblock-US can be read here on the provider’s website.
If you have registered and adjusted the DNS data accordingly, the green bar on the Unblock-US homepage should indicate that you have configured everything correctly. In Unblock-US, select one of the Scandinavian countries from the “Netflix Region Picker” menu. Due to the favourable exchange rate from Euro to Swedish Krona, it makes most sense to choose Sweden here at the time of the test. It is best to check which exchange rate is best for you before registering.
North VPN
The VPN service Nord VPN works similar to Unblock-US. This service can be used on almost all end devices and usually requires little technical knowledge. Depending on which subscription model you choose, you pay between 4 and 8 US dollars a month and can also access the international Netflix service, for example.
You can read more about how to set up the service on your device in our article Soundcloud Go. The only important thing is that you choose a server in Sweden, Denmark, Norway or Finland.
Registration at HBO Nordic
Next, go to the HBO Nordic website. This will then appear in Swedish – so it is best to change the language to English at the bottom of the page under “Språk”. The registration form can now be found by clicking on “Sign in” and “Get Started Now”. All you have to do is enter your name and e-mail address, and pay by credit card. In the test, HBO accepted both a Mastercard and a Visa card from German financial institutions without any problems.
Once the short registration process has been completed, you can take advantage of the full range of HBO services. Typical for the Scandinavian countries, contents are not synchronized, but are available in the English original. If required, subtitles can be added in the Scandinavian languages.
Security note for Unblock-US and Nord VPN
It should be mentioned that by using the DNS server of Unblock-US and Nord VPN, you cannot control when your traffic is redirected and when it runs directly through your Internet provider – so both services could theoretically redirect and possibly intercept sensitive data through their own servers unnoticed. If you want to be absolutely sure here, you should temporarily remove the DNS data of the service from the network settings when not in use.