By: Aseem Gaurav on July 29, 2011
The commercial arm of the BBC has released an iPad app that brings the British network's TV shows to Apple iPads in 11 countries: Austria, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. The iPlayer app is free, but to watch shows you need to pay $10, or $72 for a yearly subscription.
Through the app, people can access archived BBC material as well as programmes broadcast in the last seven days. The subscription version offers users over 1500 hours of programming including the shows like Fawlty Towers and Pride and Prejudice, apart from the story of the Royal Family.
The BBC said the U.K. version is designed to let people catch up on linear TV programs, while the international version will offer more classic and contemporary collection of BBC content. The organization uses IP geolocation filtering to block access to programs by people from outside the U.K.
Users can access the archives which includes the shows like Fawlty Towers and Pride and Prejudice, apart from the story of the Royal Family.
The app streams TV shows over 3G or Wi-Fi, and users can download them to their iPad for offline playback.
The organisaton plans to launch the service later in the US, but no date is set for that. In the future the BBC may look at building versions for the other Apple iOS devices.
