Big news in WorldTV land. Starting today, you can now broadcast LIVE to your WorldTV channel from your mobile phone.

We’ve partnered with the hottest name in mobile phone broadcasting, Qik, to allow for a whole range of new functionality that is really very cool.

Basically how it works is that you can now use your mobile phone as a live video camera for WorldTV, which can ‘take over’ your WorldTV channel whenever you feel like it. If someone is watching your channel when you start recording video using your phone, the ‘regularly scheduled programming’ (your playlist) is paused, and the live signal from your phone begins. As soon as you stop using your phone, the regular programming resumes from the point you left off. Simple!

All the live recordings that you make with your phone are automatically archived as clips in your Library. This means you can capture video of events that you’re at, safe in the knowledge that you’ll have a copy of them stored in your WorldTV Library. You can then download them to your hard drive by right-clicking on the file in your Library. You can do this for any file in your Library actually.

A range of useful options let you customize the functionality as you wish. For example, you can choose not to have your phone recordings go live on your WorldTV channel as you’re making them, but be archived straight to your Library instead.

You can choose sound effects and text that play when a live broadcast begins. At the moment, around 40 phones are supported, all from Nokia. More are on the way. If you’re in the market for a new phone we recommend the Nokia N95 or the Nokia E51 (with camera). Both phones work great with WorldTV and Qik.

There’s a number of ways you can use this new functionality.

  • As a simple means to record things while you’re out and about, knowing they will be safely archived in your WorldTV library without you having to do anything else. No messy cables or confusing software to deal with.
  • Live broadcasts from concerts or events for your friends. Simply tell your friends to go to your WorldTV channel and when you start broadcasting live, the channel will automatically switch to the live stream. If you use Twitter, Qik can notify your Twitter followers whenever you are broadcasting live.
  • Become a Lifecaster. Basically you can now broadcast any interesting (or not so interesting!) happenings in your life to friends, family and indeed the World. Walking down the street, going for a drive, on the beach, at a party.
  • Add live content to your WorldTV channel from other Qik broadcasters. If you find someone who regularly broadcasts on the Qik.com site, you can add them as a ’source’ without having to own a supported phone yourself. Simply add their Qik username as a source.

Qik will guide you through the process of setting up your phone for live streaming. The instructions are not terribly complicated, but you should set aside 30 mins or so to get it right. This is cutting edge stuff.

The basic process is this…

  1. You sign up for an account on Qik.com (Use this link and you’ll be approved for a Qik account right away)
  2. They send you an SMS with a link to install the Qik live broadcasting software on your phone
  3. Play around with the software and phone, make sure your videos are appearing in your Qik account (on Qik.com). If you get a ‘certificate error’ issue upon installation, see this solution.
  4. Create a custom Qik username for your Qik profile. In other words… change your Qik username to something more memorable. This part is important. Use the ‘Edit my profile’ link when logged into Qik and select ‘Change your username’.
  5. Add your new Qik username to your existing WorldTV channel in the Editor (on the ‘Phone’ tab)
  6. Configure any options you want using our handy wizard, or simply use the defaults
  7. Start broadcasting live from your mobile phone to WorldTV

Like everything on WorldTV at the moment, this service is in ‘beta’, meaning there may still be quirks while we iron out the wrinkles. We really value your feedback, so please make use of the new feedback tab on the left of these pages to tell us what you think, or how it could be improved. If you have any difficulties getting it set up, feel free to comment directly on this post below and we can then respond publicly so everyone can benefit from the advice.

Qik are a cool company that launched the same time as WorldTV. We’ll be working with them to bring you many more cool features in future.

N.B. If you’re an existing Qik user coming to WorldTV for the first time, you can import all your existing Qik videos into WorldTV simply by pasting in your Qik URL (eg qik.com/smashing) into the ‘Add Clip by URL’ tab on WorldTV. You’ll need to create a channel on WorldTV first which takes no time at all. Simply use our very easy-to-use channel creation wizard.