@g4jnw, no, it's not a con. To access region-blocked legal services outside of your region, you need either a VPN, a smart DNS service or a free method such as a proxy. Some people, especially those pretty savvy with computers prefer the free proxy method.
A great deal of others however, prefer a VPN or smart DNS provided by a company, as it is generally speaking more reliable and they do all the work for you. (and is also quite fair in price)
The link provided by mac2708 and the one advertised on that website
www.eyeondemand.com are legitimate companies that do indeed provide the service they advertise. I am personally with Overplay and have been for at least a year now and the service does everything it suggests.
I live in Germany and use it mainly for UK television, Netflix (which I have to pay direct to Netflix in addition to Overplay of course) as well as a bit of Australian, Irish and New Zealand television. Outside of Netflix, I don't watch much US television, but if you are interested in a specific service or channel in the US, let me know and I can test if it works.
Smart DNS is much more practical than VPN (besides being cheaper) as it allows you to access services from multiple countries all at the same time, without the need to tunnel in, and it doesn't affect your normal internet speed. That and you can set it up on a far greater number of devices than a VPN including Smart TV's.
The catch with smart DNS is that it is generally configured for each individual device to pair with each service. So every provider will offer different services on different devices. All that said though, it's generally not a catch as so many sites work, at least with the one I use, Overplay.
