# Hulu Plus with no ads!!!



## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

Just wanted to let everyone in on something that I've had for over 2 years now and love it's called Adtrap. Do a google search for it to find it. It's this little box and it's great! I'm not affiliated with them in any way. I was part of the kickstarter signups and have been using it and loving it! This little box goes between my cable modem and my wifi router and in real time blocks out ads. It doesn't get them all but updates nightly and you can add ads you want it to block manually if you want. It's nice doing it this way because you never download the ads in the 1st place instead of blocking them in your browser after the fact. But the best part is no ads on hulu plus or youtube on my Roamio or any device that is connected to my network. It's so nice to be able to watch shows without any ads or having to even fast forward that I end up watching them on hulu instead of the recording just so I can sit back and enjoy. Just though I'd let you all in on the fun too. Btw it's not cheap at $129 but has been more then worth it for me!


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## ncted (May 13, 2007)

You can also build your own for significantly less with a Raspberry Pi:

http://lifehacker.com/turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-ad-blocker-with-a-single-co-1686093533


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

I'm curious, how does this device work? Does it simply block domains known to be ad hosts? Sort of like a modified hosts file described on this page?
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

My hosts file is almost 16,000 lines long. Admittedly, I have to update my hosts file manually on each of my systems, but I'm guessing there is a way to write a script to autofetch the file every day and update your hosts file for you. You also need access and be able to modify the hosts files -- I can do this on my Windows and Linux PCs, and my Android tablet. I assume Mac PCs can do it too.

For a TiVo... I can see how this device would be useful. Also, you just have one device blocking bad hosts for ALL your devices connected to your internet connection.

Or does it do something else?


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

It filters for all the devices on your network. You don't have to set up adblock on browsers, hosts lists on each system, keep the form up to date. And all Wireless devices are filtered as well, so iPhones, iPads, Android phones/tablets all get the benefits. I've had my adtrap for a year and a half or so, I see a huge difference when surfing on my iPad at home versus on the LTE network.


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## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

The thing about building your own is it won't be able to block ads (aka commercials) on services like hulu plus and youtube or many other streaming sites like cbs and abc. And these are big for me! It took Adtrap a long time to get this working on all devices with a big team of people with many months of trials before it all worked on for example hulu plus without breaking it. I know as I was one of them doing the testing. And it takes a team to keep up with it as these services changes there method to make work arounds that gets pushed out to your Adtrap. It's a set it up and forget it kinda thing and just works and that is how it should be. But yes if you want to build one you can and it would block the ads you have setup. If you want a setup that does it all without you having to be a coder get Adtrap.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

This would be worth the price just to get rid of this dang floating add at the bottom of TCF on my iPad!


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

Will this work on a Moca connection?


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## ncted (May 13, 2007)

tryx911 said:


> The thing about building your own is it won't be able to block ads (aka commercials) on services like hulu plus and youtube or many other streaming sites like cbs and abc. And these are big for me! It took Adtrap a long time to get this working on all devices with a big team of people with many months of trials before it all worked on for example hulu plus without breaking it. I know as I was one of them doing the testing. And it takes a team to keep up with it as these services changes there method to make work arounds that gets pushed out to your Adtrap. It's a set it up and forget it kinda thing and just works and that is how it should be. But yes if you want to build one you can and it would block the ads you have setup. If you want a setup that does it all without you having to be a coder get Adtrap.


Not sure about Hulu since I didn't have it at the time, but the R-Pi solution I posted worked great blocking CBS streaming ads. Unfortunately, my Pi died, and I have not replaced it. Certainly, for the non-techie, the Adtrap is probably a more polished solution which does not require a huge amount of ability to use.


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

Johncv said:


> Will this work on a Moca connection?


Hi,
I do not have one of these, but from everything I have read, it is designed to block ads at the modem level, so anything coming in from the internet, wired, wireless, or via MoCA is covered.


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## dalabera (Jan 10, 2013)

ncted said:


> You can also build your own for significantly less with a Raspberry Pi:


A better tutorial:

http://jacobsalmela.com/raspberry-pi-block-ads-adtrap/

Interesting....


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## Islanti (Dec 13, 2001)

I have most Hulu ads blocked using OpenDNS' free service with the "advertising" filter turned on. It blocks for all my devices since I set my router to use their DNS. Simple.


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## Thom (Jun 5, 2000)

Islanti said:


> I have most Hulu ads blocked using OpenDNS' free service with the "advertising" filter turned on. It blocks for all my devices since I set my router to use their DNS. Simple.


I went to the OpenDNS site, created a login, and signed up for the free Home use. But I can't find where to turn an "advertising" filter on or off.

Exactly what web page do you find this at?

[Edit to add] I just checked the OpenDNS FAQ and it appears they don't block advertising because it slows internet browsing:

*Can I Block Advertisers and Ad Servers?
Chris Frost February 2, 2014
No, but for good reason. Blocking advertising providers at the DNS level can have adverse affects on browsing behavior and speed.

Significant reduction in speed is partially due to the process used by many browsers to render a Web page. Each element of content on a Web page is loaded sequentially and if several elements are blocked, the browser waits for a timeout to expire before moving to the next element. This will cause very significant delays when there are multiple elements being blocked.

This performance degradation on the user experience is the main reason OpenDNS does not offer an Advertising category in Web Content filtering.*


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

Thom said:


> I went to the OpenDNS site, created a login, and signed up for the free Home use. But I can't find where to turn an "advertising" filter on or off.
> 
> Exactly what web page do you find this at?
> 
> ...


That sounds analogous to the server-constipation problems that TiVo had (and still has, maybe to a lesser extent) with code that is not optimally multithreaded. Ads especially, but really all content that isn't interdependent, should be downloaded independently and presented as available, with no unnecessary waiting. If the user sees enough to go elsewhere before some content has arrived, it should simply be cancelled and/or discarded without causing any kind of stumble in the user interface. Google Chrome often forces me to beat on the multiuse Stop/Reload icon(s) until it finally reloads a TCF page cleanly so TCF knows I'm done with it. Is there any current browser that handles this properly, so that Stop means _stop everything now_ and Reload means _reload right now_?


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## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

The Adtrap works on any connection as long as the Adtrap is put between your modem and router. It has to create a special jump that doesn't break the video on services like hulu plus and each device does it in a somewhat different way so that was the part that took the Adtrap team so long to get right. They would get it up and running on Roku 3 but my Roku 2 wouldn't work on hulu plus and so on. And it was like this for almost all of the different services. Another one I like is crackle with all the free movies and tv shows it's great when there is no ads and it just streams right though but it's not on Tivo so I use my Roku. If you just go to there web page getadtrap.com most your questions would get answered just check out the videos at the bottom of the page. This blocks ads that are getting internet from your router whether it's ethernet connected or wifi. I'm using moca to my 2 minis and neither have ads on hulu plus. And the same goes for my Roku 2 and 3.


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## alleybj (Dec 6, 2000)

tryx911 said:


> The Adtrap works on any connection as long as the Adtrap is put between your modem and router. It has to create a special jump that doesn't break the video on services like hulu plus and each device does it in a somewhat different way so that was the part that took the Adtrap team so long to get right. They would get it up and running on Roku 3 but my Roku 2 wouldn't work on hulu plus and so on. And it was like this for almost all of the different services. Another one I like is crackle with all the free movies and tv shows it's great when there is no ads and it just streams right though but it's not on Tivo so I use my Roku. If you just go to there web page getadtrap.com most your questions would get answered just check out the videos at the bottom of the page. This blocks ads that are getting internet from your router whether it's ethernet connected or wifi. I'm using moca to my 2 minis and neither have ads on hulu plus. And the same goes for my Roku 2 and 3.


The Adtrap set up instructions just say to connect the Adtrap to the router, rather than to place it between the router and modem. Does placing it between the router and modem have a different effect or impact? thanks


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## Islanti (Dec 13, 2001)

Thom said:


> I went to the OpenDNS site, created a login, and signed up for the free Home use. But I can't find where to turn an "advertising" filter on or off.
> 
> Exactly what web page do you find this at?


Attached is the output from my "Content Filter" page on OpenDNS.


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## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

alleybj said:


> The Adtrap set up instructions just say to connect the Adtrap to the router, rather than to place it between the router and modem. Does placing it between the router and modem have a different effect or impact? thanks


The plus to hooking it up between the modem and the router is you can have more options on how you want to use it and what it blocks is the big plus for me. Go to there forums and have a read though them so you can get a better idea of what it's all about.


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## Dixon Butz (Mar 28, 2003)

Looking at their forums and looks like https filtering is still not implemented. There is a beta.
How well can it block ads without it?


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## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

Dixon Butz said:


> Looking at their forums and looks like https filtering is still not implemented. There is a beta.
> How well can it block ads without it?


Because ads aren't coming from secure sites. This way adtrap doesn't get in the way of banking and such. All I can say is if you are not sure if this product is right for you then ask them about there return policy so you can make sure you can return it if you want. For me I wouldn't be without it as not having ads aka commercials on YouTube, Crackle, Cbs, Abc, hulu plus etc is worth it's weight in gold! lol


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## Dixon Butz (Mar 28, 2003)

tryx911 said:


> Because ads aren't coming from secure sites. This way adtrap doesn't get in the way of banking and such. All I can say is if you are not sure if this product is right for you then ask them about there return policy so you can make sure you can return it if you want. For me I wouldn't be without it as not having ads aka commercials on YouTube, Crackle, Cbs, Abc, hulu plus etc is worth it's weight in gold! lol


Many ads in windows are https. I don't mean banking. Youtube is one if your logged in.
I use Adguard in windows which blocks all https ads.


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## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

Dixon Butz said:


> Many ads in windows are https. I don't mean banking. Youtube is one if your logged in.
> I use Adguard in windows which blocks all https ads.


Like I said it blocks them so all I can say is it works great for me and that's the only one I can speak for. For me the most important thing is to get rid of ads(commercials) in streaming services and Adtrap does this. Services like the one you are talking about can't do that so they are no good for what I need. Adtrap also blocks ads on any devices that are on your network so mobile tablets etc are all ad free. Also if you want you can go to getadtrap like I said and watch the videos of adtrap in action. There is even a review from Cnn there on this product.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

How has it affected your overall connection speed, tryx911? Have you seen a slowdown?


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## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

danterner said:


> How has it affected your overall connection speed, tryx911? Have you seen a slowdown?


No there is 0% slow down in ping times with Adtrap enabled or disable and in fact like one of there videos on there Web page shows, web page load times go way down because most ads are never downloaded in the 1st place. I will say though in there setting that you can log into and tweak I did change the default value for the speed of my Adtrap from 800 mhz to 1000 which is just a click of the settings. Not sure if it needs to run at this top speed for no slow downs but I figured it might as well be set at the highest speed possible.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

So, I purchased an Adtrap and it arrived over the weekend. After some initial difficulty with the setup (which it turns out was attributable to the specific brand of gateway router/modem combo that I have), I now seem to have everything working properly. I'm loving it. I primarily wanted it so that I could watch shows on my iPad using the various network apps, but minus the annoying repetitive interstitial commercials that they all serve up. It's working flawlessly for that. Thanks for the recommendation!


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## tryx911 (Jul 31, 2014)

danterner said:


> So, I purchased an Adtrap and it arrived over the weekend. After some initial difficulty with the setup (which it turns out was attributable to the specific brand of gateway router/modem combo that I have), I now seem to have everything working properly. I'm loving it. I primarily wanted it so that I could watch shows on my iPad using the various network apps, but minus the annoying repetitive interstitial commercials that they all serve up. It's working flawlessly for that. Thanks for the recommendation!


No problem. Glad to help.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

bradleys said:


> This would be worth the price just to get rid of this dang floating add at the bottom of TCF on my iPad!


 That one alone prompted me to look for an alternative to Safari on my iPad. I'm currently using Mercury browser for iOS which has built in Ad Block (similar to Firefox Ad Block Plus which I've used for years and is great). The nice thing about Mercury too is you can choose User Agent to use, so you can "pretend" to be another browser such as iOS Safari but without the annoying Ads. Also the nice thing about having Ad Block in the browser itself is it doesn't matter what network connection you are using so you get the benefit everywhere instead of just your home WiFi network. (Though I don't think it has Hulu Plus Ad block, but I don't subscribe to Hulu so don't care about that).


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## alleybj (Dec 6, 2000)

I've been able to get it to work with Hulu Plus, but not with Comcast on demand. Thanks


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## ustavio (Oct 19, 2013)

How would this work with Fios? The router is both modem and router. MoCa connects directly to the router/modem. In addition, I have a Lan to Wan connection from the Fios router to an Asus router that creates a subnet to utilize its superior dual band wireless. (the Fios router is gigabyte but wireless is single band and sucks). Where would I stick the Adtrap so it covers the whole enchilada?


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## kbmb (Jun 22, 2004)

alleybj said:


> I've been able to get it to work with Hulu Plus, but not with Comcast on demand. Thanks


Don't think it will work with VOD because the shows aren't streamed to you, your Roamio tunes an actual channel.

-Kevin


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