Hanna-Barbera, the classic childrens cartoons, including Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, and Huckleberry Hound have been made available for purchase through the iTunes UK Store.

Each hour-long classic cartoon are £1.89 each.

BBC has also put some earlier series of its shows up on iTunes UK as well. These include The Mighty Boosh and Life On Mars.

BBC content has finally appeared in the iTunes UK Store overnight. Rumors have been circling about the publicly funded network bringing shows to iTunes to supplement their 'iplayer'. There were even rumors about using AppleTV's new rental program to allow for free viewing of these shows, but it looks like they are going with the standard purchase format.

Currently available are shows such as Torchwood, Spooks, The Mighty Boosh, Life on Mars, The Catherine Tate Show, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and finally Little Britain. These are all selling at £1.89

If your on the left side of the pond, your stuck looking for torrents of these shows. Currently BBC shows only appear in the UK version of the iTunes Store.

With iTunes Movie rentals soon to be a reality on your AppleTv, it would make sense for BBC to add TV Show and Program rentals through the same interface. BBC has been utilizing their iPlayer to permit viewers to download and watch BBC programming for a limited time. BBC programming is free but also includes a limited playback window similar to AppleTV's movie rentals.

Ashley Highfield from the BBC said that "The announcement from Macworld about the effective relaunch of the AppleTV... is encouraging." This statement alone leads us to believe that the BBC has eyed AppleTV as a potential solution to their Macintosh player problem. Currently their player is flash based, and not a stand alone applicaiton like the Windows component.

The BBC is making good on their commitment to the Macintosh computing platform, by announcing that the iPlayer for the Mac will be released on December 25th. The Windows version has been available for a while now allowing viewers to download shows for viewing within a 7 day window of their BBC transmission. The download feature will be remain Windows only for now. The ability to download shows for Mac and Linux users, is expected to be released sometime in 2008. Currently we can stream the content, using a flash based viewer.

Previously support for the Macintosh and Linux platforms were ignored by the BBC, and not considered in the first iPlayer release. The BBC board of directors insisted on platform neutrality for its iPlayer software, making a strong commitment to bring BBC programs to all viewers regardless of operating system.

Check out the beta site for iPlayer and prepare to start catching up on your BBC programming.

BBC's corporate governors demanded that the network provide digital downloads of its shows to Macintosh and Linux users as well. BBC will debut its iPlayer, which utilizes Flash to provide all platforms with streaming service.

Currently the iplayer service only provides Windows users the option to download shows. These shows can be viewed offline, but are scheduled to expire after a few day after downloading.

With the governing body insisting on platform neutrality, it dictates that Macintosh and Linux downloads are coming. This move by the governors is aplauded by all of us here. The UK has a strong Macintosh support base, and to ignore this platform would be foolish and would only lead to negative press and opinions of the network. BBC has several popular shows and sub-networks under its umbrella, such as Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and regional networks such as BBC America.

MacFormat has pointed out that the BBS has questionnaire up to recieve the publics input on its online services. Question 5 of the survey applies directly to this topic.

"How important is it that the proposed seven-day catch-up service over the internet is available to consumers who are not using Microsoft software?"

So jump over to the survey and fill it out. A few positive responses for incorporating Macintosh downloads, could get this moving that much quicker.