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How to Watch “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” Online Outside of the USA

By Paul Liu
Saturday, October 26th, 2013

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (often referred to as Law & Order: SVU) is a police procedural and legal drama series which made its debut in September’ 1999. The show is a spin-off of the immensely popular Law & Order TV series and was developed by Dick Wolf for the NBC network. Law & Order:SVU has received a fantastic response from the audience as well as the critics (IMDB rating of 7.9) and the series has won Golden Globe, People’s Choice and Emmy awards for its past seasons. NBC renewed the series for its 15th season in 2013 which made its seasonal debut in September’ 2013.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Storyline and Plot

The series is focused around the Special Victims Unit of NYPD that deals with sexually based crimes. Sticking to the Law & Order style, the episodes are often based on real life incidents or headlines that attract significant media attention. A typical episode follows SVU’s detectives as they investigate the crimes and close upon leads. The SVU is filmed on location in the New York City which gives the series an authentic look and feel.

Law & Order: SVU Availability

Law & Order:SVU is telecast on Wednesday nights at 9 P.M. on the NBC channel. The series is also available online through the official website of NBC (nbc.com/law-and-order-special-victims-unit/). However, the online version of the series is only available to US residents due to licensing restrictions. Even if fans of the series try to access the latest episodes from a different location, they merely see the message – “We’re sorry, but the clip you selected isn’t available from your location. Please select another clip”. As it can be imagined, such location related restrictions are especially problematic for US expats and tourists since they are not able to watch their favorite shows online.

How NBC Blocks Access To Law & Order: SVU

NBC has tied up with several TV networks and content providers to distribute Law & Order:Special Victims Unit outside US. Due to the sharing terms agreed upon by its partner channels, NBC no longer holds the rights to broadcast the show outside United States. To enforce these rules, NBC checks the IP address of its visitors and only allows viewers with a genuine US IP to access the series episodes online.

Since the IP address plays a crucial part in revealing your actual location to NBC, you need to change your non-US IP address and switch to a US IP in order to unlock Law & Order: SVU from abroad. While a lot of people think that changing IPs is difficult and involves technical knowhow, in reality it can be done quite easily by subscribing to an IP changing service like a proxy or a VPN. While proxies have their advantages, VPNs deliver better speeds and total privacy which is needed for unlocking streaming services from abroad.

How To Watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit From Outside US With A VPN

Step 1: Subscribe to a fast and reliable VPN service that offers US IP addresses. To unlock Law & Order: SVU from abroad, we recommend checking out the unlimited speed and bandwidth plans from Kepard, IPVanish, HideMyAss, ExpressVPN or Private Internet Access since these companies are renowned for their VPN service.

Step 2: Next, create a new VPN connection manually or install the VPN client provided by your vendor. Usually, the custom VPN clients are available for Windows based systems while other Operating systems need manual configuration.

Step 3: Save the new connection details and apply the changes. For custom installation, it may also be necessary to reboot the system. In case of mobile devices, remember to close and restart the NBC app so that it can use the latest connection details to connect to the NBC site.

Step 4: Initiate the VPN connection by clicking on the VPN Connection name in the start menu or by tapping the Connect option on the mobile screen. You may have to wait for few seconds for the service to connect to the server since the connection time depends on the physical distance of the server as well as your internet speed.

Step 5: Check whether the IP address allocated to you is from United States. Since most big VPN provides have servers in several countries, it may be possible that the default server of the service is not from US. In such cases, all you need to do is browse through the list of available US servers available with the provider and choose a USA VPN server that is near to your current location as your VPN server.

Step 6: Connect to the NBC website again and click on Law & Order:Special Victims Unit episode names in order to unlock them. To watch the episodes through a mobile device, remember to close and restart the NBC app after switching to a US IP. Congratulations, you can now watch Law & Order:SVU episodes from all locations in the world.