Parents will be able to use mobile phones to watch their children playing at home as early as next year, thanks to technology developed by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The new, affordable video-streaming system even works on second-generation phones.
The director of the university's Multimedia Technology Research Centre, Oscar Au Chi-lim, said Hong Kong phone networks had expressed interest in using the system and he expected it to be on the market as early as next year.
'Hong Kong will be the first city in the world to be able to offer this kind of technology,' Dr Au said.
The telephones will pick up images transmitted from a camera in the owner's home. Subscribers also will be able to watch DVDs playing at home, check traffic reports or watch TV shows live on the phone.
The video-streaming system uses the Audio Video coding Standard (AVS) technology, which offers sharper pictures than other systems. It works on older 2G phones because the software compresses large video files into slide-show images.