Ashley Highfield the BBC’s director of future media & technology, has announced that the on-demand service BBC iPlayer will make its debut on July 27. Available free of charge to UK licence payers, it will allow them to download programmes from all of the network’s channels and watch them for up to 30 days before the files delete themselves. BBC iPlayer has been developed by the BBC’s Future Media & Technology division, Siemens and Red Bee Media. It is currently being tested amongst 15,000 people and will have a full marketing launch this autumn. Future distribution partners could include AOL, Tiscali, MySpace and Yahoo!
