Tag Archives: iPad

September 29, 2011 · 2:55 pm

BBC iPlayer iPad App Now Live in Australia

The long awaited Australian version of the BBC iPad app launched today. 

The app will make British TV shows such as Little Britain, A Bit Of Fry And Laurie and Absolutely Fabulous available for iPad users through the App store for a monthly subscription fee of AU$9.49 or AU$89.99 a year (as expected).

The app enables users to stream and to download shows for offline viewing for when Wi-Fi or 3G connectivity is not available.

Jana Bennett, president of Worldwide Networks and global BBC iPlayer, said: “We launched the global BBC iPlayer because we think there’s an untapped market for the ‘best of British’ shows, both for Brits living abroad and for all those people we know have a love of great British television, nowhere more so than Australia.”

However, first impressions suggest that it is not as good as the ‘full’ iPlayer that is available in the UK. The BBC must protect deals with Australian broadcasters where they have sold shows exclusively, so these will be missing. It looks like they will be relying on archive content.

There is no Match of The Day either which is disappointing.

When you can get a fake VPN to access the real iplayer for free, or find MOTD online for fee, im not sure that people will rush to  get this ‘light’ version for $89.99.

Maybe it will improve in time?

Please let us know what you think below.

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February 11, 2010 · 11:22 am

SMH or The Guardian on Your New iPad?

As the dust settles following the launch of the iPad, everyone is trying to figure out what it means for different industries and who will buy it.

For British expats in Australia it could be very useful, particularly in terms of media consumption. At the launch Apple showed a demo of the New York Times (below). It looks great – with video, picture slide shows, search, change text, links to archices etc etc.

So soon you will have any UK newspaper a ’tap’ away on your iPad.

In terms of cost, this is still TBC. UK newspapers are already available in Australia on iphones via the Press Reader app. They give you 7 free papers then charge $1.19 (although im not clear on if that’s for the whole paper including sections and magazines or if these cost more). 

I would imagine UK papers in on the iPad will cost less, about 50 cents per day and the user experience will be mutch better. The Press Reader app is OK but the iphone is too small to read really and the download is slow – about 8 minutes per newspaper.

The iPad launch has some significant implications for Australian media and newspaper companies in terms of expats, there are 1.3 million Brits in Aus and i can see them ditching the SMH / Age / Aus for UK papers on the iPad (if they haven’t done so already to read online – on PC). Then there are expats from China (250,000), Italy (220,000), Vietnam (180,000) plus many more.

Other observations on the iPad for Brits in Aus:

- No video camera is annoying – would be great for Skype as we use that more than most.

- Will be good for consuming other media from the UK, particularly radio in the short term and longer term TV – once format owners in the UK have worked through rights issues and they can sell TV shows direct to us via iTunes.

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