IMAGINE A world without limits, where the power and reach once held by a tiny few is suddenly at the disposal of all. Then stop imagining, because it's happening today.

After six years of cutting-edge research and development, streaming media specialists Rawflow Inc will this weekend launch SelfCast, a revolutionary new service that threatens to turn the television industry upside down.

Heralding a new age in online entertainment, the system enables virtually anyone to pipe live broadcasts to an audience of millions for the price of a broadband connection.

"This is the future of broadcasting. Just one click and you're live to the world," said Mikkel Dissing, SelfCast's CEO and co-founder.

"For the last few years all we have heard about is user-generated content, but that was just the beginning. The next big thing to take the planet by storm will be user-generated broadcasting, and it will have an enormous impact upon the way we produce, transmit, market and consume television."

To use SelfCast, would-be television moguls simply register at the site and download a free software package. The system can be used with anything from standard webcams to professional-grade video cameras, and users can drop video clips, music or background images into their live broadcasts. Anyone can watch using an ordinary web browser.

But the innovation doesn't stop there. SelfCasters are presented with a list of who's watching their broadcast - and can then communicate directly with audience members while they're on air.

"Imagine TV shows that respond to requests from their viewers in real time, or city councils that broadcast their meetings and allow voters to present their views and reactions to the proceedings," said Dissing. "We're introducing a whole new level of interactivity to the visual medium and the list of potential applications is almost infinite."

Although such hype has been seen before, it would be a mistake to think this is just another YouTube rip-off. While the video-sharing sites that have dominated the web for the past 18 months must be pre-recorded and are limited in size, length and quality, SelfCast offers high-quality, full-scale broadcast TV.

It's a breakthrough that is fast attracting attention from broadcasters. Dissing has already worked extensively with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and the technology has been adopted by a French TV company for The Secret Story, a fly-on-the-wall reality show.

Yet in a world where multi-channel television is being delivered across a proliferating range of mediums, it is the non-broadcasting sector that Rawflow believes SelfCast will revolutionise.

The YouTube phenomenon has shown the public appetite for user-generated entertainment, and SelfCast's scheme to share advertising revenues with millions of amateur programme-makers is the basis upon which the company believes its financial future will be built.

This, it believes, is the age of the "narrowcast" - transmissions that serve a niche market too small for the traditional schedules, but become workable when the audience is global and the price of production is cut to the bone.

With multi-million pound backing from venture capital firm Benchmark, Rawflow recently acquired Aggregator TV, a Dutch company with 50,000 subscribers paying monthly fees to access a range of specialist shows.

The option of a paid subscription model will shortly be added to the SelfCast service, and the company expects the next few years to see a boom in specialist programming delivered this way.

It is not alone. According to analysts InfoTrends, the global market for private and corporate narrowcasting services is already valued in excess of $1.6 billion and is poised to undergo exponential growth over the next five years.

"This is really going to shake things up," said Dissing. "People are demanding more interaction and greater innovation from the shows they watch, and they are increasingly going to be tuning into the web to find it."