12:31pm Wednesday 19th March 2008
By Corey Stephenson
FRIENDS and relatives unable to go to their loved one's funeral will soon be able to watch it on the Internet, the Daily Echo can reveal.
Mourners will also be offered a CD or DVD of cremations in Southampton under a new scheme launched next month.
People who cannot personally attend a funeral can pay £75 to avoid missing out on saying goodbye to their nearest and dearest. In return they will be given a password to access a live webcast of the service.
DVDs will be available for £50 and sound recordings for £25.
The new service is being made available from the start of April.
The council-owned Southampton Crematorium is one of the first to take up the technology which they hope will improve the service offered to mourners at the 3,500 cremations in its East and West chapels each year.
Crematorium manager Trevor Mathieson hopes it will allow staff to make the service a lot more personal.
He said: "Sometimes not everyone can make it to a funeral because they live too far away or are too ill. This can let them be a part of the service."
He explained that the webcasting service appear on the internet with a 20-second delay and each service would be filmed by a small discreet camera at the back of the chapel.
He thought it was unlikely to stop people attending cremations just because they have the option to watch it online.
Mr Mathieson, who has worked at the crematorium for ten years, added: "It allows the whole service to run a lot smoother and no one has to worry about copyright issues or having to set up a stereo to play a CD correctly.
"People like to make it more personal and it is now often more about the person than about religion.
"There is normally a song played that means a lot to the family, where as ten years ago an organ was traditional. I think out of every 50 cremations only one uses an organ for music."
The service is provided by Wesley Music, who offer multimedia technology to crematoriums in the UK that allow them to access almost any song or piece of music for a ceremony without the need for CDs, tapes or separate stereo equipment.
Wesley Music director Alan Jeffrey said the use of webcasting, which is available at 11 crematoriums across the country, was becoming popular with local authorities. "It was born out of the idea of helping the elderly relative in Australia who could not make it back here for a family funeral," he said.
"The technology used for the music services allowed us to develop it and offer this as well.
It's more of an extra service for families then something considered as a commercial facility."
Webcasting was used recently when a soldier's funeral was watched by comrades in Basra.
For the full story see today's Daily Echo.
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