In the not too distant future you might be sitting on a DART or on a bus - or even in a traffic jam - with time to watch a recording of your favourite tv programme on your 3^rd generation mobile phone, and you may use technology currently being developed right here in Ireland.

The integration of television, personal computers and mobile phones is drawing ever nearer and among those working at the forefront of research development is a team of Computer Applications scientists and Electronic Engineers at DCU (Dublin City University).

The Físchlár System is being developed at the Centre for Digital Video Processing at DCU and is currently being piloted by over 1,000 users including staff, students and families living on campus.

This is how it works:

Users look at an online TV guide and request Físchlár to record a particular programme through their PC or via SMS messaging. Físchlár records and stores the programme and can then play it back to user on demand. Users can also access any other programme requested by others on the system. Currently Físchlár is being used to record an average of10 hours television per day from any of 8 terrestrial broadcast channels and is also capturing teletext 24 hours per day. The Físchlár video archive can store up to 300 hours of television but this capacity could easily be increased as the project develops.

Físchlár isn't just a digital video recorder accessed via a personal computer. The technology facilitates very sophisticated browse and search functions. Journalism students at DCU use Físchlár to study the structure of news programming through visual, audio or a combination of audio-visual, or text material. They can view the whole programme through a screen of 24 images that denote story breaks and can join the recording by simply clicking on a selected image.

The technology is fast moving towards interactive search and filtering. These facilities will enable users to instruct Físchlár to, for example, "find clips about Roy Keane broadcast within the last month" or "create a table of recorded material on foot and mouth disease". Alerting will enable the user request a notification such as "tell me via a text message when anybody is talking about the budget on RTE 1 or Network 2" and summarisation will show the user a shortened version of a selected programme.

As the DCU group develops Físchlár it will be able to add features such as multimedia messaging solutions - which means video playback of personalised clips on mobile devices such as laptops and mobile phones. By the time 3^rd generation phones are available to the mass market the Físchlár team will be able to provide interactive mobile multimedia.

According to Professor Alan Smeaton, Fischlar has real commercial potential. "There are maybe 3-4 other groups, mainly in the US, looking at this technology but we are at quite an advanced stage of development and are very confident that the Físchlár system will make it to the marketplace. We are currently at pilot phase with 1,000 users and its popularity for entertainment and for educational purposes is very apparent." Said Professor Smeaton.

The research work behind the Físchlár system has been sponsored by the Enterprise Ireland Informatics Programme, Dublin City University and has also been supported by SUN Microsystems.

ENDS