This paper introduces a personalized content preparation and delivery framework for universal multimedia access. This framework has a wealth of potential applications in broadcasting, the World Wide Web and mobile telecommunication. Content preparation deals with the generation of summaries by automatic video analysis techniques, and with the annotation of content using MPEG–7 for search and retrieval and SMIL for interactive video. The use of open standards favors interoperability with third-party applications and upcoming hardware. Content delivery handles individual user preferences, content selection, real-time content adaptation and streaming in a seamless way. The proposed framework has been implemented in the EC–funded R&D project PERSEO and tested by selected groups of end-users. Personalization, video summaries and the overall usability have been positively evaluated.