BBC rolls out iPlayer onto iPhone

The video is encoded at 400 kilobits/second while the audio is a 116 kilobit/second AAC stream

The BBC has launched an iPhone version of its iPlayer online application to stream TV shows to the Apple handset with stunning video and audio quality

The BBC has today launched a Beta version of its online iPlayer application for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

If you point your iPhone's browser at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer and try clicking on some of the programs you should see that some of them now load up at full screen on the iPhone's display.

Coverage is a bit hit and miss - Ashes to Ashes was unavailable though Price Harry in Iraq loaded up fine - but is sure to improve over the coming weeks. It is a Beta release after all.

This is the first version of BBC's iPlayer to appear on a mobile device. The BBC has re-encoded many of its videos from Flash - which the iPhone famously cannot handle - to the more Apple-friendly H264 video codec.

The quality of the programs that are iPhone-compatible is absolutely stunning - the video is encoded at 400 kilobits/second while the audio is a 116 kilobits/second AAC stream. The downside of this high quality is that the videos won't run over EDGE - only a WiFi link can handle the bandwidth.

The videos also cannot be downloaded to the iPhone to view later. But even with these limitations the iPhone has now become by far the best way to view BBC TV programs when you're away from a TV set or PC. And it paves the way for a truly mobile viewing experience when Apple finally rolls out a 3G-enabled iPhone