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How to Watch Two and a Half Men Online Outside of the US

By Paul Liu
Monday, October 21st, 2013

Two And A Half Men is a sitcom TV series which made its debut in September’ 2003. The series was created by Chuck Lorre and Lee Aronsohn for the CBS TV Network. Over the past decade, Two And A Half Men has received a fantastic response from the audience as well as critics (IMDB rating of 6.9). The series has won Primetime Emmy, People’s Choice and ALMA awards for its past seasons and was renewed for an eleventh season in 2013.

Two And A Half Men Storyline And Plot

During its first eight seasons, Two And A Half Men revolved around the lives of two brothers Charlie and Alan Harper (Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer) and Alan’s 10 year old son Jake (Angus Jones). The two brothers are poles apart except when it comes to hating their mother. Charlie is a jingle writer who leads a hedonistic lifestyle in his beach-front house. When Alan is divorced by his wife Judith (Marin Hinkle), he moves into Charlie’s house while Jake keeps shuttling between his parents.

Due to Charlie Sheen’s firing, the series was cancelled midway through its eight season. During the ninth season, Walden Schmidt (played by Ashton Kutcher) buys Charlie’s house after his death. Walden is a billionaire going through a painful divorce and he invites Alan and Jake back into the house after Alan has left to live with his mother. Together, the three of them form a closely knit surrogate family.

Two And A Half Men Availability

The first nine seasons of the series were broadcast on Mondays but the show was moved to the Thursday night slot from its tenth season. The show is telecast on the CBS Channel and is also available online through the CBS portal (cbs.com). Due to content licensing restrictions, the online episodes of the show are not available outside United States. People trying to access the show from outside United States come across the message – “The video you have requested is not available for your geographic region”. These location based restrictions severely limit the entertainment options available to US expats, tourists and fans of the series who are studying abroad.

Why Does CBS Block Access To Two And A Half Men

CBS does not own the broadcasting rights for Two And A Half Men outside United States. The channel has signed content sharing agreements with several other TV channels and content providers for the international broadcasting of the show (Nine Network, GO! and Fox8 in Australia, CTV in Canada, Canal+ in France, TV3 in Denmark and Norway, among others). To implement these restrictions, CBS scans the IP address of its visitors and only allows viewers with a legitimate US IP address to access the videos and full episodes. International viewers, including US citizens based overseas, are simply redirected to the Content Unavailable page.

Since the IP address plays a pivotal role in location determination, you need to change your IP address to an IP from US if you want to access Two And A Half Men from abroad. This can be done quite easily by using an IP changing service such as a proxy or a VPN. While proxies are known to be affordable, VPNs deliver unbreakable security and blazing fast speeds that would allow you to access the GEO-IP restricted sites without revealing your real IP address.

How To Unlock Two And A Half Men From Abroad With A VPN

Step 1: Get a VPN connection from a well-known VPN provider like IPVanish, Kepard, HideMyAss, VPN4ALL or VyprVPN. These providers deliver a fast and reliable VPN service and are able to provide IP addresses from several US cities.

Step 2: Install the VPN software provided by your VPN company or create a new VPN connection manually. For mobile devices, manual setup is often the only option available since very few companies provide custom VPN apps with their plans.

Step 3: Save the changes after installing and configuring the service. Also, remember to close and restart the CBS app on your mobile device after you have saved the network changes.

Step 4: Connect to the VPN by clicking on the Connect option available next to VPN connection name in the Start Menu or on your mobile screen. The time required to connect to the VPN server would depend on your current location and the internet speed available to you so you may have to wait for few minutes before the connection is established.

Step 5: Once the connection is made to the default VPN server, check your new IP address and confirm that it is from United States. In case the default server is from some other country, browse through the available server options and choose a USA based server as your VPN server. Also, you should remember to choose a server located near to your current city so that you get the best browsing and streaming speeds.

Step 6: Browse to the CBS website and click on Two And A Half Men episode names to unlock them. To watch the episodes from your mobile screen, close and restart the CBS app after your have changed your IP address. Congratulations, you can now unblock Two And A Half Men episodes from any region in the world.