With the advances in multisensory systems, networked communications and human computer interaction, we are witnessing the emergence of richer multimedia developments that significantly enhance the users’ experience. These kinds of developments include the combination of multiple types and sources of content such as audio, video, tactile, etc. and sophisticated manipulations of the data to create novel multimedia user experiences. In order to enable such new scenarios, it has to be achieved a new level of delivery of multimedia content centered in the user that we coined as “User Centric Media” (UCM).

In this context of new User Centric Media, users will be always central as creators and consumers of content. In this sense, the role of the user in the media value chain will change accordingly to available technology. A clear example of this can be seen through the explosion of user-generated contents and social networks that require a shift of the market to new business models for sharing, exchanging, delivering and experiencing multimedia. Consequently, new technical challenges arise from the need of providing these new services efficiently through the value chain giving space to user-centric media technologies to emerge as one of pillars of the Future Internet. Addressing these challenges will be possible by extending the frontier of the state-of-the-art through new ways of conceiving management and interaction with content through advances in research on the emerging “Media Internet” topic.

This special issue presents recent advances towards the new scenarios envisioned by UCM that may be enriched by mobility. In the first paper, “Seamless Content Delivery over Mobile 3 G+/4 G Networks”, the authors propose a novel content distribution and adaptation architecture for seamless content delivery. The authors implemented and validated their system over real testbeds and real-time emulators of various networks. Additionally they introduced interested results utilizing new coding formats of video coding and new methods for increasing the robustness of video delivery. The second paper, “Visual Targeted Advertisement system based on user profiling and content consumption for Mobile Broadcasting Television“, presents a content personalization system for targeted advertising over mobile broadcasting networks and terminals based on user profiling and clustering. In the third paper “A system for mobile active music listening based on social interaction and embodiment” the authors present a system developed as part of the SAME European Project that enables a novel paradigm for social, active experience of sound and music content. The fourth paper “An Adaptive Control System for Interactive Virtual Environment Content Delivery to Handheld Devices” presents a novel approach based on a controller that can automatically adjust streaming parameters basing on feedback measures from the client device. Finally, the fifth paper “Authentications and Key Management in 3 G-WLAN Interworking” the authors propose an authentication and handover scheme and present results demonstrating significant reduction of authentication latency.