Patent ID: 8042136
Filing Date: 2011-10-18
Classification: G06F,H04H,H04N

Abstract:
1. An information processing apparatus which provides information related to program content distributed in accordance with scheduled times, the information processing apparatus comprising: a receiver having a processing unit operable to set particular program content as a base program in accordance with an operation by a user with respect to the program content, and to control transmission of program specification information related to at least a portion of the base program; and a server operable to receive the transmitted program specification information related to the at least portion of the base program, to manage, for each one of a plurality of portions of programs, program information related to that program portion and formed of multiple items by assigning to each such item an associated relevance ratio with respect to the at least portion of the base program, the plurality of portions of programs including portions containing broadcast commercials that are inserted between other portions containing program content, the program information including program information related to the portions containing broadcast commercials, to search for those program portions whose program content is related to the at least portion of the base program based on the relevance ratios, to arrange a search result of the related program portions in order of items having a decreasing relevance ratio with respect to the at least portion of the base program, to create a base program related information page that displays program information related to the base program and that displays, for each program portion in the arranged search result, the programs which include that portion, and in response to a particular program being contained multiple times in the base program related information page, to manage the base program related information page to display that program at most a predetermined number of times; the server being operable to further manage the program information by assigning an associated further relevance ratio with respect to a user's liking to each one of the related programs in the search result that is determined from user content operation history and user questionnaire results; the server being operable to further manage the base program related information page by separating out a predetermined number of programs from the related programs of the search result, the predetermined number of programs being those having a highest further relevance ratio with respect to the user's liking, and rearranging the predetermined number of separated out programs in order of decreasing further relevance ratio, to control the display of the base program related information page, and to control output of the base program related information page; the processing unit of the receiver being operable to control acceptance of a user selection of a related program or item of the base program on the displayed base program related information page, and to control presentation of a detail operation screen that includes an operation scheme applicable to detail information for the related program selected by the user and/or the related program.