BBC Launch International iPad iPlayer

Here’s a story that’ll bring a tear to the eye of British expats around the world and, we suspect, a sudden upturn in sales of iPads to people of British origin. The BBC, gawd bless ‘em, have just annoucned the release of the special internationally branded version of the iPlayer. It will launch in western Europe now and the US, Canada and Australia later in the year, reports the The Guardian.

There will be a certain amount of free content on the app, but you open up the motherlode of televisual and radio content by paying either a  €6.99 ($10USD, $9AUD) monthly fee, or €49.99 ($71USD, $ 66AUD) annual fee. Content from the last month will be made available along with content from the Beeb’s archives.

According to The Guardian, the development team worked closely with Apple on the offline feature. “When we were doing our user testing, the use case was picking six shows before going on a long journey, and leaving them to download to the iPad overnight,” he said. ”The way the device works, though, is it hibernates and stops you from doing that: you wake up the next morning and only half a show has downloaded. We have managed to override that functionality, and Apple are comfortable with us doing that.”

If you do want to watch on the go, the player will stream over 3G or wi-fi – we’re assuming that you’ll achieve better viewing results this way than watching BBC iPlayer over a VPN. Even better, certain other British shows from indepedent channels will be made available on the iPad iPlayer including Primevil, Misfits and The Naked Chef. Bring it on.