Patent ID: 8132209

Claim:
A program information providing apparatus, comprising: means for storing control data for controlling reservation of a program for unattended recording; means for providing which, if a first information processing apparatus that requests an unattended recording reservation from a first location requests provision of program information about said program over a network, then provides said program information to said first information processing apparatus; means for determining which, based on user information sent from said first information processing apparatus regarding a user of said first information processing apparatus, determines a first and a second e-mail address from previously registered information, said first e-mail address corresponding to said first information processing apparatus as a destination to which a result of setting the unattended recording reservation is to be reported, said second e-mail address corresponding to a second information processing apparatus, located at a second location, on which said unattended recording reservation is to be set; means for preparing which, if said first information processing apparatus requests that said control data be sent over said network to said second information processing apparatus, then reads said control data, which is designated by said user of said first information processing apparatus, from said storing means before preparing a first e-mail by attaching to said first e-mail the retrieved control data and said first e-mail address determined by said determining means as representative of the destination to which the result of the setting of said unattended recording reservation is to be reported; means for sending said first e-mail prepared by said preparing means to said second information processing apparatus corresponding to said second e-mail address; and said second information processing apparatus sends a second email to said first email address that reports the result of the setting of the unattended recording, and said result of setting the unattended recording reservation includes selected program information which indicates a name of the program.