What is BBC iPlayer?
Back in 2007 the BBC started allowing people to watch TV shows that had been recently broadcast online through its iPlayer service. From the moment it entered a public beta (and in fact before that even for those of us who found the test streams) watching the BBC online became very popular. However unlike those early test streams the actual iPlayer content was only accessible from the United Kingdom, the BBC were using IP addresses to establish your location and restrict the programming accordingly. The service allows you to watch all BBC channels both live, and in most cases up to 7 days after they are broadcast. Since then just about all the UK TV channels have become available online in one form or another, but each and ever one of them has been restricted to those living in the UK using the same method as used for BBC iPlayer. Thus if you were living in the USA you could not in theory get access to the iPlayer service, there has never been an iPlayer USA service.
