As revealed yesterday, UK broadcaster the BBC have unveiled a new beta of their iPlayer TV catch-up service, especially to cater for the Apple iPhone.  Tech.co.uk took a first look at the program, which takes advantage of a new 512Kbps stream the BBC have encoded especially for the handset; sadly it’s still too much for EDGE to handle, but apparently performance is still impressive:

“It has to be said that quality is excellent, both visually and surprisingly in terms of sound. Playing iPod tracks out of the iPhone’s tiny speaker invites a storm of distortion, but little of this is present when watching a TV programme” Tech.co.uk

We’re not using the new Apple SDK, nor are we using the much-rumoured Flash for iPhone (no - we haven’t seen it, either). Instead, we’re creating 516Kbps streams (400Kbps H.264 video, 116Kbps AAC audio) that show off BBC programmes brilliantly on an iPhone” Anthony Rose, head of Digital Media Technologies, BBC

Apparently the BBC is intending other versions of the iPlayer app for different mobile handsets, which will also include programming and downloadable versions.