BBC hits including Little Britain and League of Gentlemen will be available on Amazon's new internet film and TV show download service.

The corporation's commercial aim, BBC Worldwide, and its 24-hour news channel BBC World, have between them sold 400 hours comedy, drama, science fiction, documentary and news content to Amazon Unbox.

The service, which launched yesterday in the US, allows user to download to rent thousands of movies and TV shows from Hollywood studios including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros and TV networks such as CBS and Fox.

Many of the BBC programmes will get their first digital outing and will be accessed through BBC links on the Amazon Unbox homepage.

Beth Clearfield, the BBC Worldwide Americas vice-president of programme management and digital media, said the deal was part of the corporation's push to "explore different avenues to share our content with an expanding audience".

Simon Danker, the BBC Worldwide director of digital media, added: "Following this deal we'll be working with partners globally to maximise our presence in this arena."

Amazon Unbox will compete with Apple, which is expected to begin selling films on its iTunes service. Apple already sells TV show through iTunes.

The Amazon service allows users to buy a film or show from one computer and download it to another; from the office to home, for instance.

Content can be transferred on to DVDs for storage, and the DVDs can be used to play the movie on the computer that downloaded the movie. However, they cannot be played through a normal DVD player to a TV set.

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