Goals and objectives of the European project “MPEG-4 PC — MPEG-4 System Implementation and Tools for Personal Computers” (ESPRIT #23191) are presented. An overview of the project’s developments for authoring and playing, from local and remote sources, of content that conforms to the new multimedia standard ISO/IEC:14496, nicknamed MPEG-4, is given. Example applications for proving the functionalities and the powerfulness of the MPEG-4 standard, that is expected to become of great importance in the media world, are presented. A demonstration, including broadcast features, is planned during the ECMAST’99 Conference.