The growing availability of digital contents and the simultaneous cost reductions in storage, processing, and networking is driving the growth of the entertainment technology. Many of the technologies pioneered in emerging entertainment applications have also found use in a large spectrum of more serious settings, ranging from telemedicine to in-home, in-car, in-flight multimedia distribution platforms. Further, while in the past, entertainment technology traditionally offered predominantly passive experiences (e.g., video on demand), continual advances in network and computer technologies are providing tools for implementing greater interactivity and for enabling consumers to enjoy more exciting experiences, such as, for example, interactive digital TV, interactive theatre and orchestrated music and sound design. Simply put, today's entertainment technology is able to create "entertainment spaces" in which people experience a world where games, movies, songs, plus news, sport events and shows, are all made available for instant enjoyment with just one click. Even though high-tech entertainment promotes interdisciplinary fusion, however, only the ubiquity of wireless/wired communication is considered suitable for accepting the challenge of building a "large interactive environment" for the delivery of the maximum entertainment value to millions of consumers worldwide. In this respect, there is a great hope that the wired and wireless Internet (along with its protocols, architectures, programming styles and technological solutions) may take over this complex scenario for fulfilling the consumer expectations. The first IEEE International Workshop on Networking Issues in Multimedia Entertainment provides an open forum for researchers, engineers and academia to exchange the latest technical information and research findings on Next-Generation Multimedia Networking concepts, technologies, systems, and applications for entertainment covering existing deployments, current developments and future evolution.

W02-1: On Maintaining Interactivity in Event Delivery Synchronization for Mirrored Game Architectures
Claudio E. Palazzi (University of Bologna, Italy; University of California Los Angeles, USA); Stefano Ferretti, Stefano Cacciaguerra, Marco Roccetti (University of Bologna, Italy)

W02-2: Design and Simulation of a Migration-based Architecture for Massively Populated Internet Games
Ludovico Gardenghi, Sandro Pifferi, Gabriele D’Angelo, Luciano Bononi (University of Bologna, Italy)

W02-3: NMP—A New Networked Music Performance System
Xiaoyuan Gu, Matthias Dick, Ulf Noyer, Lars Wolf (Technical University Braunschweig, Germany)

W02-4: A Multimedia Broker for Ubiquitous and Accessible Rich Media Content Transcoding
Paola Salomoni, Silvia Mirri (University of Bologna, Italy)

W02- 5: Performance Evaluation of a Proxy System for Providing Immersive Audio Communication to Massively Multi-Player Games
Cong Duc Nguyen, Farzad Safaei, Paul Boustead (University of Wollongong, Australia)

W02-6: GhostShare—Reliable and Anonymous P2P Video Distribution
Alok Nandan, Giovanni Pau (University of California Los Angeles, USA); Paola Salomoni (University of Bologna, Italy)

W02-7: A Video Frame Dropping Mechanism Based on Audio Perception
Marco Furini (University of Piemonte Orientale, Italy); Vittorio Ghini (University of Bologna, Italy)

W02-8: Modeling System Performance in MMORPG
Gao Huang, Meng Ye, Long Cheng (IBM China Research Lab, China)

W02-9: Peer-to-Peer Architecture and Protocol for a Massively Multiplayer Online Game
Madjid Merabti, Abdennour El Rhalibi (Liverpool John Moores University, UK)

W02-10: A Scalable and Low Delay Communication Scheme for Networked Virtual Environments
Nobutaka Matsumoto, Yoshihiro Kawahara, Hiroyuki Morikawa, Tomonori Aoyama (The University of Tokyo, Japan)

W02-11: Fast Colored Surface Rendering for Entertainment Applications on Small Devices—An Experimental Study
Alessandro Amoroso (University of Bologna, Italy)

W02-12: Buddy-Finder: a Proposal for a Novel Entertainment Application for GSM
Claudio Enrico Palazzi (Università di Bologna, Italy; University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

W02-13: Implementations and Evaluations of Location-based Virtual City System for Mobile Phones
Hiroyuki Tarumi, Kazuya Matsubara (Kagawa University, Japan); Masahiko Yano (Fujitsu Shikoku Systems, Ltd., Japan)

W02-14: MSAP—A Protocol for Efficient Multimedia Content Search and Distribution on the Internet
Qiang Nelson Yin, Chung-Horng Lung (Carleton University, Canada)


Co-Chairs:
Giovanni Pau, UCLA, USA
Marco Roccetti, University of Bologna, Italy
Scott S. Lee, Samsung, Korea

Advisory Committee:
Ian Akyildiz, Georgia Tech, USA
Yucel Altunbasak, Georgia Tech, USA
Gary Chan, Univ. Science and Tech, HK
Jeff Derby, IBM, USA
Alex Gelman, Panasonic, USA
Nelson Fonseca, Universiy of Campinas, Brazil
Pascal Frossard, EPFS, Switzerland
Charlie Judice, Verizon, USA
Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA, USA
Stan Moyer, Telecordia, USA
Ramesh Rao, UCSD, USA
Heather Yu, Panasonic, USA

Program Committee:
Alessandro Amoroso, University of Bologna, Italy
Luigi Atzori, University of Cagliari
Abdellatif Benjelloun, France Telecom, France
Marc Cavazza, University of Teesside, UK
Jun-Hong Cui, University of Connecticut
Juan Carlos De Martin, IEIIT, Italy
Sudhir Dixit, Nokia Research Center
Abdennour El Rhalibi, Liverpool John Moores University, England
Magda El Zarki, UC Irvine, USA
Enrica Filippi, STM, France
Mário Marques Freire, University of Beira Interior, Portugal
Borko Furht, FAU, USA
Marco Furini, University of Piemonte Orientale, Italy
Maria Teresa Gatti, STM, Italy
Mario Gerla, UCLA, USA
Xiaoyan Hong, UCLA, USA
Alan Kaplan, Panasonic, USA
Inwhan Kim, Samsung, Korea
Rioychi Komiya, Multimedia University, Malaysia
Barcin Kozbe, Ericsson, US
Taekyoung Kwon, Seoul National University, Korea
Brijesh Kumar, Panasonic, USA
Newton Lee, Disney, USA
Yujin Lim, SAIT-Samsung, KoreaTechnical Committee
Ching-Yung Lin, IBM, USA
Keith Marzullo, UCSD, USA
Gianluca Mazzini, University of Ferrara, Italy
Madjid Merabti, Liverpool John Moores University, England
Ryohei Nakatsu, Kwansei University, Japan
Algirdas Pakstas, University of North London, England
Guy Pujolle, LIP 6, France
Mark Smith, HP LAB, USA
Clark Taylor, University of California, San Diego
Fouad Tobagi, Stanford, USA
Stefano Tomasin, University of Padova, Italy
Mehmet Ulema, Manhattan College, USA
Ravanasamudram N Uma, University of Texas, USA
Socrates Varakliotis, University College London, England
Lars Wolf, IBR, Germany
Steven Wright, Bellsouth, USA