Patent ID: 7937486

Claim:
An information processing system comprising: an information providing apparatus and an information processing apparatus interconnected via a network; wherein the information providing apparatus includes: generating means for generating sample content data including content identifiers for identifying individual content in a set of contents selected from a content database and metadata for the indentified individual content associated with the content identifier for the identified individual content, before transmitting the generated sample content data to the information processing apparatus; deriving means for deriving preferences of a user of the information processing apparatus from a result of an evaluation of the sample content data received from the information processing apparatus; selecting means for selecting contents from the content database based on the preferences of the user of the information processing apparatus derived from the result of evaluation of the sample content data; and communication means (i) for transmitting, to the information processing apparatus, the generated sample content data, (ii) for receiving, from the information processing apparatus, the result of the evaluation of the sample content data, and (iii) for transmitting, to the information processing apparatus, the contents selected from the content database based on the preferences of the user of the information processing apparatus derived from the result of evaluation of the sample content data; and wherein the information processing apparatus includes: evaluating means for evaluating the individual content in the set of contents in the sample content data based on the metadata associated with the individual content and in accordance with user preferences stored on the information processing apparatus, before transmitting the result of the evaluation to the information providing apparatus; and output controlling means for outputting the contents which have been transmitted from the information providing apparatus after being selected thereby based on the user preferences derived from the evaluation result.