Hi all! I’m in America and the last few years I’ve had a subscription with ExpressVPN so I can watch the Geoblocked YouTube videos. This year is the first year I’ve ever had issues and was wondering if any other VPN users (maybe even ExpressVPN users specifically) were having similar issues.
Yesterday before the Live Stream of Semi Final 1, I turned on the VPN (set to Germany, but later tried Ireland AND Netherlands), the live stream video is nowhere to be found, as if I wasn’t using a VPN, just regular American YouTube. Came here to Reddit and followed a link to the Live Stream, when I opened it the video was a black screen with “This video is Unavailable.” NORMALLY the screen will have something playing it a static picture of the Eurovision Logo and “Stream will be begin soon.”
Even tried my VPN on another device, same result. I could see/watch the individual clips of performances after uploaded to the channel. Stream still nowhere to be found.
Now Today I had a craving to watch Irelands Performance again, but the video will play the logo in the beginning then the video cuts off to “This video is unavailable.”
Did they crack down on VPN’s? Is ExpressVPN no good anymore? What’s going on? I hate Peacock, Help lol.
I’d recommend reinstalling your VPN software. It obviously is not functioning properly. (Yes, I know you tried it on another device. Do it on both of them.) YouTube is one of the easiest VPN-able sites out there and there’s no excuse for what you’re experiencing.
If that doesn’t work, it’s time to see what sort of customer support ExpressVPN has.
And if you don’t get it sorted before tomorrow, may I recommend eurovision.de, which has a no-commentary feed without a geoblock. The link should come up shortly before airtime. (It’s called “originalton”.)
I used Hotspot Shield VPN and it worked fine (I am from Lithuania, but the stream is also geoblocked here). So maybe there’s just an issue with ExpressVPN.
I’m using Nord VPN this year. They have a 30 day guarantee, so you do get charged but if you cancel within a month you get it back. No issues with the Youtube stream. It is geoblocked in the UK and Australia also, so make sure your server is set to somewhere else.
I used Nord the other day from the US to watch the YouTube stream. It wasn’t the live stream, but the replay, but worked fine and didn’t show up without the VPN on.
I watched the replay on the YouTube app with my NordVPN account. Worked fine, BUT I was getting a ton of ads. I don’t remember ever getting ads on the ESC stream, and it was dropping in ads every few minutes, sometimes in the middle of a song! Didn’t matter which country I signed into. Is this new? Is it just the YT app?