August 6, 2011

If you are located in UK, or if you spoof your IP address so that it appears to come from a British IP address (e.g. via VPN) then you can watch BBC shows via iPlayer and via their websites. However if you are a regular user who would like to get BBC content on your iPad, then up to now, the only way to accomplish this, was to go to iTunes and buy the desired shows one by one (and not all BBC-produced shows are available in all countries).

With BBC iPlayer (Global) iPad users in several countries (not in USA yet) can watch BBC productions via newly released iPlayer app from BBC – for a low monthly fee of 6.98 euro or an annual fee of 49.99 euro. In this article I am reviewing BBC iPlayer for iPAD, Global edition (i.e. not British).

The bottom line is that with this app you get access to plenty of British content (shows, movies, series) made by BBC or made for BBC and you can watch it comfortably either offline via local download  or via streaming:

While this app offers access to huge amounts of content, ranging from documentaries to many interesting comedy and science-fiction shows, it has one basic flaw: many TV series accessible via this app offer only old seasons/series. Example: here is a British TV comedy series about young chavs (i.e. British white trash peoplez):

You can see that only seasons/series 1 and 2 are available via BBC iPlayer for iPad, Global edition, but in reality 9 (!) series were produced and aired in UK! Probably BBC wants to earn bigger money off this series by selling it on iTunes and that’s why only older seasons/series are available via this app.

Even though this app does offer plenty of interesting content, the built-in search function of this app is technically inferior. Here is an example where I was searching for a documentary from a British traveller about something by searching with a keyword:

I couldn’t find the episode I was searching for! However I tapping through the menus , I was able to find it after all.

And the same applies to other shows. So this app offers not only old series, not latest episodes but also it is difficult to find old episodes.

The search function of this app is pathetically bad: I couldn’t even find words that were inside of description of shows.

Sadly some great BBC productions, like Tittybangbang comedy series (something like Little Britain but performed by female actors – I have seen it through British satellite Astra 28.2 on BBC3 TV channel) are not available via this player at all.

Another disadvantage: lack of subtitles (available when viewing BBC via satellite in UK and sometimes via iTunes).

I recommend you not buy a subscription, but just for one month, check if given shows you like are available, and then buy it after checking it out.

It’s nice that one can post to Facebook and Twitter from within this app:

All in all, even with the above mentioned issues, this app offers huge amounts of interesting content for a fixed price.

So it is indeed worth purchasing and suggests that nowadays the iPad is being used a lot as TV/video viewing device by many people and many TV/video apps are available only for iPad.

Conclusion: probably, similar to iTunes (e.g. iTunes UK has The Big Bang Theory TV show but iTunes USA not), once this app is available in the USA, it will offer different content to US customers than to European (non-British) customers. I recommend getting this app, buy one month subscription and look around. You may like it, particularly if you are a fan of UK television.

To get this app tap here (not available in USA yet):
BBC iPlayer (Global) for iPad.

[thanks to @ChrisOldroyd for suggesting this app for review!]

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