Categories: Apps & Software News   Tags: , , , , ,

The BBC promised an international iPlayer service this year and today it has delivered. The first global iPlayer app is available in 11 European countries today and limited to the iPad. The move is part of a one-year pilot scheme that will expand to include the US, Canada and Australia later this year.

A global iPlayer app subscription costs either €6.99 (£6.14) a month or €49.99 (£44) for a full year, around a third of the cost of an annual UK licence fee. While the app shares the same look and feel as the domestic service, the way it works and the content it includes will be different.

Read on to discover what our European cousins will get for their cash including a major feature British viewers don’t have yet…

The global iPlayer app has launched in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland today. Rather than offering a straight seven-day catch-up service, it features a curated selection of BBC shows both new and old. That includes Doctor Who collections and other international favourites like Top Gear. The app doesn’t offer BBC radio content.

As well as archive material, which is not available on the domestic iPlayer, the international version allows viewers to stream shows over 3G as well as Wi-Fi and a download feature to store programmes on the iPad for offline viewing. Neither of those features is offered in the UK although offline viewing was an option back when iPlayer was in its beta testing phase.

The BBC has suggested the service will expand to the iPhone before the end of the year but has yet to make any announcements about an Android app or support for any other platforms. It’s likely that the project has avoided a web version of the service initially to leapfrog issues with deploying DRM.

If you’re one of our European readers, let us know whether you plan to pay for an iPlayer subscription. And if you’re an iPlayer fan in the UK does the inclusion of features that we haven’t got hold of yet irk you? We’re still dreaming of an iPlayer passport to let us catch up on our favourite shows when we’re travelling.

Out now | £free + subscription | BBC Worldwide/iTunes

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  • clownshoes

    Re iPlayer Passport; the BBC usually only owns the rights to shows within the UK and so would be in breach of it’s contract agreements to make them available to anyone outside the UK.  What BBC Worldwide has done is buy the rights to these shows but they are still subject to availability limitations and first showing agreements by local broadcasters.  Finally, BBC doesn’t own the licence fee information, it’s all controlled by Capita; if they were to release that info the the BBC then they would also be able to release it to every marketeer out there.

    • Anonymous

      That was exactly the argument used in favour of satellite encryption, but then the BBC abandoned it and consequently made it’s programming available to much of Western Europe. Some people said at the time that the World would fall in and American production companies would refuse to make material available to the BBC, but this never happened.

      I think we should all be much more worried that this is only available on the iPad. That represents a completely unacceptable endorsement by a powerful publicly funded corporation of just one American company. Has Apple paid for this priceless advertising ? Is it right that European citizens are forced to buy an iPad just to access the iPayer ?

  • Murdo

    You dont need the app – use Firefox, TOR and Vidalia – amend the config to use a uk IP address as an exit node and you can watch the UK iplayer anywhere. i’m as techinacal as a turnip and i got it to work no problem  – i do pay a license in the UK tho so i dont have any guilt

    • Abigail

      Murdo you don’t sound turnip like! Did this then mean you could use iplayer on a mobile platform – I’m hoping to get the radio element of iplayer onto an iPod touch. If what you describe could make that work could you set out exactly what you did? I’m infinitely more turnipish than you!

      • Anonymous

        Hey Abigail! Try Skyfire – it loads BBC iPlayer radio applets in the browser.

  • Abigail

    I’m fed up. I’ve waited a year only to find that they’re not including radio. I’m not interested in tv so this is useless for me. No way to use ‘listen again’ facilities in Europe. A complete income loss for the beeb since I’m guessing I’m not the only one who would have happily paid. Real bummer.

  • Haraldsdottire

    A real shame that the BBC iPlayer app just launched in 11 countries does not include radio. In fact, that is the only thing I wanted.

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