The CW has a lot of great hit shows like 90210, Americas Next Top Model, The Vampire Diaries and much more available for streaming in the US. If you are outside the US you will be unable to stream videos from The CW unless you use the following trick.
If you try to watch a video on the The CW from outside the US you will be meet with the following message: “ Sorry, this content is not available in your location”. This is due to the fact that The CW uses location detection to prevent users from outside the US to stream content from the site. They do this by determining your location via your computers IP-address. An IP-address is a number that your computer will inherit from your Internet Provider and it will reveal your location when visiting websites. So what you need to do is have The CW think that you are located in the US while in fact you are not.
How to Make The CW Think you are Located in the US
So in order to make The CW think that you are located in the US you need to be using an American IP-address on your computer. This is done by connecting to what is called a Virtual Private Network – you might
have heard of this as a VPN. Once your computer connects to a server on such a network it will inherit an IP-address from this server. So if the VPN server you are connecting to is located in the US then you will appear to be as well. That is all it takes to trick the CW and be allowed to stream videos from the site. This is great news if you travel outside the US or simply live somewhere else in the world.
Setting up a VPN connection is actually not that complicated and even a novice can do this. I prefer using Unlocator as they have made an application for both Mac and PC that does all the hard work. Once signed up for Unlocator then simply install the application and select a city in the US from the dropdown list of the application and click connect. Then the app will do all the magic behind the scenes and connect your computer to the US VPN server. As long as the app is running and you are connected to the server you will appear to be located in the US. Simply click disconnect whenever you want to go “back home” and no longer have a need to appear in the US.
Get CW on the iPad or iPhone From Outside the US
The app for The CW is only available in the US app store. In order to get access to it you have to purchase a gift card to the US iTunes store and the log into your iTunes account and redeem the gift card. The location of your Apple ID will then change and you now have access to the US app store and you can then download the CW app.
Unlocator has great apps for IOS so you can connect to US servers in a second. Alternatively you can use their Smart DNS service, which unblocks The CW on all devices.
As you can see this is fairly simple to set up and you do not need to be a computer geek to make this work – it is actually pretty simple stuff.
