If cyclingfan is free, then yeah, Tunnel Bear + whatever else gives you much better resolution.
Tunnel Bear (or other VPN such as Hola for Chrome) allows me access to British Eurosport. Het Nieuwsblad is one of the few major races (other i could think of is the Brabantse Pijl) that Eurosport doesn't cover. Otherwise TunnelBear + Eurosport = access to almost all the cycling races of the year.
VPN to England = access to the BBC, which covered the Track Worlds, and it was high resolution (see screenshots
here, the resolution are actually a bit worse). BBC also covered UCI Road Worlds live the past two years. As for the noncycling programming, I've been able to watch shows on Netflix not available in the U.S., BBC's coverage of the world cup, and shows on BBC iPlayer. So yeah, VPN has a lot more utility to me than just bike races, though I did first start using it to get Eurosport