BBC releasing Top Gear (hopefully) and other shows on web for free

For those who don't know a bittorrent from a Buick, there's a new way coming to get your fix of Britain's best telvision program, Top Gear. The BBC has spent a ton of money over the last three years developing what it calls the iPlayer, a video-on-demand player that people can download on their computer and use to watch BBC programming from the last seven days, supposedly including Top Gear, though the linked article doesn't mention specific shows by name.
It's not all roses and puppies, though, as the player will be supported by advertising, probably embedded into the videos or the player itself. Once a program is downloaded via a scheduler built into into, you'll be able to watch it within 30 days, after which it will be automatically deleted. A version of iPlayer will be available for both the Mac and PC when it launches in April.

Personally, we despise these types of closed players that force us to add yet another application to our program folders. Call us crazy, but we'll deal with the long download times of a site a bittorrent site like FinalGear.com in exchange for the ability to keep the shows as long as we want and convert them into any file type we choose. You can't control the web man, it's like, the people's web or whatever.

Thanks for the tip, SwatLax!