Patent ID: 6990489

Claim:
An information processing apparatus for providing content data to a terminal device, said information processing apparatus comprising: content data storage means for storing a plurality of pieces of content data; communication means for transmitting the content data stored in said content data storage means to a plurality of terminal devices and for receiving input information of each user for the transmitted content data; input information storage means for storing said input information received by said communication means for each user; analysis means for analyzing a preference of a target user on the basis of the input information of a similar user, which resembles the input information of said target user stored in said input information storage means; and processing means for processing content data to be transmitted to said terminal device according to the analysis results by said analysis means, wherein said content data storage means stores a plurality of pieces of image data, and said communication means receives positional information within said image data indicated by each of said users, wherein said analysis means comprises extraction means for extracting said positional information of said similar user, which indicates that an image area in the vicinity of said positional information of said target user, stored in said input information storage means, is indicated, wherein said extraction means extracts said positional information of said similar user, shows an image area resembling features of an image in the vicinity of said positional information of the target user, stored in said input information storage means, is indicated, wherein said processing means improves the image quality of a part of the image data specified on the basis of said positional information of said similar user, extracted by said extraction means, more than the image quality of the other parts of the image data, wherein said processing means comprises: classification means for classifying image data specified on the basis of said positional information of said similar user, extracted by said extraction means, in predetermined block units; coefficient storage means for storing a coefficient set for each class in advance, for computing pixel data of a part of a high-quality image by a first-order linear combination of a plurality of pieces of image data within the block of a low-quality image classified in said predetermined block units; and adaptive processing means for outputting image data having higher quality that said image data computed by the first-order linear combination between the image data within the block of said image data which is a target and a coefficient set within said coefficient storage means, corresponding to a class classified by said classification means.