Patent ID: 8768791

Claim:
A media sampling method, comprising: storing product content samples and product content information; disposing at a location within a retail site a sampling station, the sampling station being operable to enable a user to listen to and/or view one or more of the product content samples, and the sampling station comprising a display device, a bar code scanner, and a headphone; communicatively connecting the sampling station to a server located within the retail site via a network cable, the sampling station being configured to (a) receive all of its electrical power via the network cable and (b) use the network cable to transmit data to and receive data from the server; displaying on the display device a prompt prompting an administrator to configure the sampling station upon the sampling station being communicatively connected to the server via the network cable for the first time; storing in a point-of-sale (POS) database pricing information for products being sold at the retail site; automatically in response to the bar code scanner scanning a bar code of a product placed by the user adjacent to the bar code scanner, transmitting information encoded in the bar code to the server coupled to the POS database; in response to receiving the information at the server, using the information to retrieve from the POS database pricing information for the product; after retrieving the pricing information, transmitting the pricing information and product content information related to the product to the sampling station, wherein, upon receiving the pricing and product content information, the sampling station uses the display device to display the pricing and product content information to the user, wherein the step of prompting the administrator to configure the sampling station comprises displaying a user interface screen to the administrator that enables the administrator to assign a configuration parameter to the sampling station, and the configuration parameter is a location identifier identifying the location of the sampling station within the retail site.