A question about proxies

I am a fan of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show and watch it the day after on the net, commercial free at http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/videos.jhtml

Recently, numerous foreign viewers complained of being cut off from watching it. It turned out to be a glitch of some kind (since fixed) but I had had (and still have) my own problem with viewing the show which I summarized in this post:

“I live in the US. 3 or 4 days ago, I started getting stop motion video on the daily show (frame rate about 1/sec) along with frequent video seeking and buffering. Audio is ok (when not buffering). WTF. US fans: Am I alone in this?”

I received no answer and I turn to you. One of the foreign viewers wrote that he had had success using http://www.hidemyass.com, a free proxy service. I tried it and, wonder of wonders, problem solved.

What’s going on here?