File under: about bloody time! The BBC has, at long, long last, released an iPlayer beta which supports both Linux and Mac users.

Expensive and error-prone digital tapes has forced BBC UK, one of the world's largest television broadcasters, to look at using computers running Linux to help produce its programs.
Speaking at the annual linux.conf.au Linux and open source conference in Melbourne, Stuart Cunningham from BBC research, said copying digital tapes is a slow process as it must be done in real-time.
To solve this problem, the BBC Research team developed Ingex for tapeless TV production using Linux.