It is with joy I report that the BBC have started transcoding iPlayer content for the iPhone/iPod Touch. What this means is that whenever I am hooked up through a WiFi hotspot, I can get hold of any of the BBC’s programmes which are stored on the iPlayer.
There are also some other interesting points raised. Firstly, the ’security’ mechanism behind this is that the BBC does some user-agent checking. Basically, anything which can pretend it is an iPhone (Or Touch) can get the iPhone video stream. It was possible to rip the Flash video stream the BBC was using before, but it was fairly low quality. However, the H.264 stream given to the iPhone is higher quality, hence higher quality rips which are ready to go on an iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV.