Create Your Own TV Channel Using Your Mobile Phone

TNO announced the launch of Farcast TV, a service that allows anyone to create their own TV channel using their mobile phone. Website owners can give users access to Farcast TV by embedding a few line of code into their websites. Movies can be sent from the mobile phone to the TV channel via MMS or via a dedicated application. TV channel managers can invite users to contribute to the TV channel or they can allow anyone to post into their channel.

"Farcast TV is another step in bringing together the telecom operators, Internet and media industries. It changes the way in which users experience television, they no longer only watch it, they create it," said Robert Westers, product manager of Farcast. "With the combination of the Farcast platform and Farcast applications we enable media companies and operators to gain competitive edge in supporting global trends like 'user generated content', 'semantic web' and 'cross-media'".

Farcast TV is built on the Farcast platform that allows users to manage and share multimedia content wherever they are, regardless of format or device used. Farcast incorporates subscription (content owner and consumer), secure content management, transcoding and delivery (push and pull) functionality. The platform can be used as an integrated or remotely hosted solution. Farcast can also be integrated into IMS or SIP-based architectures, generating a new breed of rich media applications which encourage the creation and sharing of multimedia content.

Applications developed to date on the Farcast platform include Farcast Reporter, Farcast AudioLink and FeedMe!. Farcast Reporter enables journalists to publish news text, images, audio and video files via their mobile along with GPS-based location tags. Farcast AudioLink distributes regular bulletins with the latest news in audio files to subscribers' mobiles. Farcast FeedMe! offers webloggers the possibility to make their blogs mobile. Visitors of the weblog can fill in their mobile number and will receive the latest weblog item each time a new post appears on the blog.

Farcast TV is currently demonstrated at the 3GSM World Congress.