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Comment by wikiburner | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone in the U.S. had any success signing up for and using the HBO Go standalone service "HBO Nordic AB" through a VPN? It's only $12 a month in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

Is the content automatically subbed or dubbed, or is English the default?

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Usually in Nordic countries, tv and movies are not dubbed but subtitled, so HBO Nordic is also with subtitles but which I think are optional.

I have tried the service in Finland, but haven't actually signed up for it. It might require a local address/credit card.

That's interesting. If that's their only verification, you could probably pretty easily get one of those rechargeable or "gift card" credit cards, and plug in any address you want.

Isn't it that you need to phone in with information like your SSN to activate them? Doesn't seem like you could register any address you'd like.

To activate the credit cards? I'm pretty sure you don't - you just need to plug in any old address and phone number online which aren't verified (at least with the gift card ones), kind of like a burner cell phone.

You might need to get European cards, though, and I'm not sure how they work over there or how easy they are to get.

There is a distinction between prepaid credit cards and gift cards. I'm not sure why, but prepaid credit cards typically require a SSN and gift cards don't.

They end up working just about the same though. You can buy them both at a retail store for cash, and use them just like a credit card anywhere Visa/Amex/Discover/whatever is accepted.

I use HBO Nordic and can confirm that all of the content is in the original language (usually English) with optional subtitles.

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