The BBC is promising a broadcasting revolution to rival the arrival of colour television as it announces a new service that allows viewers to download programmes on demand. The £130 million iPlayer will let viewers download programmes such as Doctor Who and The Apprenticeover the internet for up to seven days after they have been broadcast.

Viewers will have up to 30 days to watch a downloaded programme online, free of charge, before the file deletes itself. The iPlayer will contain 400 hours of BBC programming a week and there are plans to make the service accessible from mobile phones and other handheld devices.

However, it will take 30 minutes to download a typical programme and the BBC promised to ensure that the file-shar-ing technology it is using does not slow the internet to a crawl.

After three years in development, the BBC Trust gave permission to introduce the iPlayer with a number of restrictions, to protect the emerging commercial downloads market and DVD sales.

Shows can be stored for 30 days, not the 13 weeks proposed by BBC management, and there will be limitations on the ability to view episodes of series broadcast outside the seven-day window.

It will be possible to “stack” previous episodes of a current drama series such as Doctor Who and Jekyll for viewing because they have a “narrative arc” and a conclusion. But past episodes of long-running series including EastEnders, Horizon, Top Gearand Blue Peter cannot be viewed outside the seven-day window.

Ultimately, the corporation will “simulcast” each of its channels live over the web. Sport, news, feature films and American acquisitions are excluded from the first version of the iPlayer, which is launched next month.

The iPlayer will be accessed by clicking through the BBC website. There will also be links on popular video-hosting websites including YouTube, MSN, MySpace, Blinkx and Bebo.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of future media, said that there was “real concern” among internet service providers that the iPlayer could create a web “traffic jam”. An hour-long programme will take the same length of time to download.

Millions of viewers accessing the file-sharing technology simultaneously would create online gridlock and slow high-speed broadband connections to a crawl. The BBC will manage the “traffic” by downloading files overnight.

Viewers can now choose between competing download services. ITV’s version allows viewers to stream programmes, a quicker process than the iPlayer, Channel 4 lets users “rent” shows for 99p.

The easy-to-use iPlayer has been designed for viewers who may be unfamiliar with YouTube and have never downloaded video over the internet before. Parents can use a PIN to “lock” children out of the iPlayer as the watershed and the notion of the linear schedule come under threat.

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