Since it’s limited launch last year, and then it’s full public launch over Christmas, the BBC iPlayer has proved massively popular, dragging thousands of UK viewers over to Web TV.

The service has since been added to the Apple iPlayer, and Nintendo Wii, proving the BBC’s commitment to the cause. And now it has added old TV to it’s distribution line-up.

Virgin Media Join The Fray

The BBC iPlayer will now be available on Virgin Media, the biggest cable television provider in the UK, and rival of BSkyB, whose chairman James Murdoch criticised the service just last week.

Virgin Media’s customers will now be able to access the last seven days of BBC programming, which adds up to about 350 hours of content each and every week.

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The BBC iPlayer has surprised everyone, even the BBC itself, with the amount of viewers it has picked up since it’s relaunch over Christmas. But not everyone is happy with that success.

James Murdoch (yes, media chief Rupert’s son) is the Chairman of BSkyB, a pay television service in the UK, has criticised the service, and almost accused it of monopolizing the business of on-demand - surprise surprise.

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Ashley Highfield, BBC future media and technology director, and the man who has made the BBC iPlayer so successful in such a short space of time, has quit to become CEO of the Kangaroo project instead.

The Kangaroo project, first announced last November, is a joint collaboration between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to build an online TV platform for the UK similar to the US only Hulu.

iPlayer Massively Successful

The fact that Highfield will be overseeing its development and launch should be a positive sign, because the iPlayer has gained a massive amount of viewers since its relaunch at Christmas.

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The BBC iPlayer is the Web based television catch up service from the UK’s public broadcaster.

Since launching last year, and then getting a much needed relaunch over Christmas, the service has proved immensely popular, and taken Internet TV in to the mainstream in the UK.

A month ago, the BBC inked a deal with Apple which saw the iPhone and iPod Touch become the first mobile devices to support the service, and now Nintendo has done the same.

iPlayer on Wii

From today, every Wii owner based in the UK will have access to a version of the service and be able to watch most of the last seven days worth of BBC programming through their games consoles.

This signals the first time that the iPlayer will be available in people’s living rooms through anything but a PC, Mac or laptop, although a deal with Virgin Media to make the service available over Cable television is also said to be in the pipeline.

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With most of the big players in the Web TV and streaming video industry being based in North America, read Google, YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo!, it’s easy to forget this is a worldwide phenomenon.

We already know that the amount of Internet traffic heading to online video sites in the US is rising rapidly, and the business model is slowly but surely getting worked out.

Now we learn that traffic in the UK is also rising at a massive rate, with the latest statistics showing a rise of 178% in online traffic being targeted at video sites in Britain over the last year.

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An advertising funded broadband service which only launched fully at the beginning of January, has already been forced to suspend its services after complaints from British broadcasters forced its hosting company to pull the plug.

TVCatchup was/is a service which offers users the chance to record any TV show from 12 of the 19 free-to-air channels in the UK, which can then be watched online at a later date, and shared with other registered members.

After completing a test run last year with 5,000 beta testers, the site went fully live on January 1st of this year, and offered users the chance to “Never miss a show again”. The only problem is, right from its inception, the legality of such a service was called in to question.

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The BBC iPlayer is seemingly proving more popular than anyone could have predicted, with its success even prompting estimates for total UK online viewing to be scaled dramatically upwards.

When the iPlayer was originally announced and released in a public beta last year, the BBC were criticised for only offering the service to people using Windows based operating systems.

Public Dissatisfaction Worked

As a public broadcaster, with a duty to provide content for all, this is a valid complaint as it immediately stopped anyone using an Apple Mac or Linux based computer from accessing the service.

The BBC listened to the arguments, and took on board the views of the 16,000 people who felt angry enough to sign an online petition, and the service was relaunched over Christmas with Mac and Linux support, albeit offering just streaming content rather than downloads.

This, coupled with a marketing campaign over the holiday season has seen the iPlayer grow vastly in popularity, and the service saw over 1 million downloads in the first 20 days out of beta.

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