As long as you live somewhere within the UK, pointing your iPhone’s Safari browser at the TV Catchup optimized site will allow you access to Britain’s five main networks, including BBC 1 and 2, ITV and Channel 4, as well as six additional channels, including BBC 3 and 4 Music.

Attempting to access the site from outside of the UK results in a dialog informing you that you aren’t authorized to play back the content in question, which comes as no surprise given the general attitude of major U.S. TV networks when it comes to international access.

If you are in the UK, you get streams from each channel delayed only about 20 seconds behind the live TV feed. You can also watch in either landscape or portrait mode (using your phone’s built-in Quicktime player) and pause any footage.

Keen readers will observe that the BBC is already available to all on the iPhone via its own iPlayer web application (also limited to UK residents). That app provides on-demand access to many BBC programs, like TV.com does for various CBS shows in the U.S.

Apps like Slingplayer and Orb can also potentially bring live TV to the iPhone, but require expensive hardware and software additions to your existing setup, or at least an iPhone app if you already have everything else. TV Catchup only requires that you have an iPhone and a network connection, which can be either Wi-Fi or 3G.

No word on whether TV Catchup will eventually try to expand its service to include international audiences, or international stations, but I sure hope someone out there is watching and thinks this is a good idea. True, AT&T would likely try to block something like this because of the network load or because it can’t control access via subscriptions, but if it’s a similar web-based application from someone like Hulu, there’s little it can do to stop it.

Asian cell phone users have been enjoying TV on their mobile devices for years, thanks to 1seg TV antennas. It’s about time we started catching up. I suspect the last barrier will be stubborn networks. Don’t worry guys, you can still advertise to us on a mobile platform.

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The BBC’s iPlayer is nothing short of a digital revelation — providing viewers in the United Kingdom with online access to an ever-changing (and free) selection of the BBC’s internationally-revered quality programming.

For an increasing number of us Brit’s, BBC.co.uk/iPlayer is the site we surreptitiously visit on our lunch-breaks at work and the destination for catching up on missed TV in the evenings. Yet upon its initial beta launch back in 2007, the iPlayer was a national disappointment; exclusively for Windows and with more bugs in it than an entomologist’s cupboard.

While iPlayer downloading may have been refined somewhat — Windows users can grab DRM-ridden episodes for play in Windows Media Player – it’s still not an option for Mac users. However, Erik Huggers is the man set to change all that. He’s the BBC’s verbosely-titled Director of Future Media and Technology and a veteran of Microsoft, having spent nine years with the Apple-competitor.

Speaking to Guardian.co.uk earlier today, Huggers talked about the different platforms used to access the iPlayer, “The situations we’re seeing are interesting – mum and dad are watching linear TV in the living room but kids are watching it in a different way … on the iPhone, iPod touch or laptop.”

The statistics for non-Windows platforms are indeed promising. Wii and Linux users account for 1% of the viewership, iPhone and iPod touch owners make-up for 3% and, notably, one in 10 viewers are Mac users. The intention is that by the end of 2008, the iPlayer will feature a native download manager for viewing episodes on the Mac.

Of course, the episode files are sure to have some kind of DRM embedded within them — the BBC has an awful lot of red-tape to go through and that can make for clunky solutions to simple problems. It’s also not clear as to whether the download manager application will have an embedded video player, or if there will be some kind of Quicktime/iTunes support.

Now here’s the really exciting thing for non-UK readers of TAB: Huggers also talked about opening the iPlayer up to international viewers, ”… today we are artificially blocking international access to the iPlayer. That’s a problem, in my mind, and a big challenge for the industry.”

Although Huggers hasn’t outlined a time-line for opening the international flood-gates as yet, the suggestion is that at some point in the future you’ll be able to grab your fix of Doctor Who, Little Britain, Spooks and all the other fine programs by the Beeb, regardless of your global location.

Stay tuned for more iPlayer news in the future, we’ll be keeping an eye on the BBC as they develop the service.

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