As a lot of brits I tend to spend a lot of time watching TV, but what happens when you miss it and that’s why certain broadcasters revealed on demand services, for people to watch selected shows over the internet, probably the best of these services is BBC iPlayer, which has become even better, as it has now been released for the iPad.

From today the BBC is beginning their global roll out for their new iPlayer app, which will be introduced into 11 additional countries across Western Europe, including The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Austria, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Switzerland and Spain

But this won’t be the same service us Brits are used to, in fact it seems better the BBC say it is going to become more of an on-demand service rather than a catch-up service, which means in addition to offering fresh content from recent weeks, they will also be adding classic shows such as Only Fools and Horses and Never Mind The Buzzcocks (Not really a classic, but I enjoyed it).

The managing director of bbc.com, Luke Bradley-Jones sent a statement out to explain the new service:

“We think we have a load of unmet demand for BBC and British content internationally.

“This is not a catch-up service: this is a video-on-demand service. We will have content from the last month, but also the best from the catalogue stretching back 50 to 60 years.”

I don’t know about you but I am already getting jealous, but there is more as well as access to the BBC’s vast archive of shows, it will source some extra content from ITV Player and 4od. But as with everything there will be a small price to pay for the service, from which Europeans can sign up monthly for £6.99 or £49.99 for an annual subscription, but some of the content will be available for free.

The app for the iPhone will allow you to stream all of this content over both Wi-Fi and 3G whilst allowing you to download TV shows in order to watch them offline, but that’s not all the director revealed, according to Mr. Bradley-Jones the U.S may also be receiving BBC iPlayer pretty soon:

“The rights picture for the US is a little bit more complicated.

“The nature of the agreements with our rights partners are different, and the windows across our existing business are older than they are in Europe.

“Form our side, we have to jump through a few more of those commercial and legal hoops. We could have launched in the US with a product this week, but there would have been a few too many missing parts.”

Alongside this the app will also be released in 12 months for both the iPhone and AppleTV, which does seem a long time, I think it might get released a bit sooner on good behavior, if your wondering why the Andriod or Windows Phone hasn’t been mentioned yet it’s because the BBC are focusing solely on Apple devices for the time being, but plan to expand the service in the future:

“We hope that this service becomes multi-device, multi-platform and multi-territory over time, but as a premium-but-niche service, we did not want to go in with both feet from day one.

“We’re spending the next year in a pilot-type phase focusing on one device, to make a clean and very compelling experience. We have a great relationship with Apple in terms of the promotional commitments they’ll give us too.”

What do you think about this? Have you downloaded the App yet? What do you think about it?

Drop us a line or two in the comments below.