BBC iPlayer for iPhone launches

The earlier leaks are now confirmed to be true by the BBC themselves, who have launched a special version of the iPlayer website for the iPhone and iPod Touch. As of today, users on an iPod Touch or iPhone can browse to bbc.co.uk/iplayer through Safari, and view specifically-encoded videos for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Right now there are only a limited number of shows that will work on this mobile version, but shows are being added constantly. The video is encoded at 400Kbps H.264 video, with a 116Kbps AAC soundtrack. Because of this relatively large file size, the iPhone can only access content through Wi-Fi, as EDGE speeds will be too slow.

I tried this out on my iPod Touch, and I was impressed by the video and audio quality streams. Of course, I was using Wi-Fi, but there was very little time between buffering and starting the video stream. Make sure you turn the screen orientation to landscape, or else the video will play portrait in a 4:3 format.

Via [MacNN]