Networking experts: How does Xbox Live know where I live?

[Lyris]

OK, so I have a US 360, a US account, my locale is set to USA, and I'm loaded up with US Microsoft points. My Xbox 360 is practically s***ing stars and stripes. And yet, whenever I go to rent from the Video Marketplace, I'm told:

"This item is not available from
your current location."

How do we get around this problem? Can any networking experts tell me what settings I need to add to my router to allow me to give them my money?

[VR46]

I don't think we can, on a slightly similar theme, some American TV channels pull shows that aren't doing well and broadcast them on the web. And if you're outside USA you can't watch them.

I would love to be wrong though

[Lyris]

Well, on a PC you can get around it by using a proxy server. The free ones are really slow, but apparently you can sign up to a dedicated service and get it faster.

I thought that maybe there'd be some way of getting a good proxy and somehow adding it to your router? So that way, the 360 would use it as well.

I don't understand why the studios promote piracy in this way.

[EvilBoris]

I don't think your normal home router has options for proxy servers.

[MadMarc]

I'm pretty sure your IP adress has your location information in it so at least they know from which country you come from. To get around this problem, maybe a proxy would do it.

[Lyris]

Yeah, I've been experimenting with Anonymizer. It works fine for my Windows PC but I don't know how I'd replicate the proxy thing for the 360.

Maybe I need some sort of IP tunneling software to send the 360 requests to the PC for cloaking.

[NaveT]

MS will ban you from LIVE, if they detect you are using an anonymiser type of Proxy.

xbox-scene has a lot of info on it, but they all generally end up with a ban....