Patent ID: 8001576

Claim:
An information providing system comprising: a plurality of information providing apparatuses and a plurality of information processing apparatuses, said plurality of information providing apparatuses providing image data and sound data over a network to said plurality of information processing apparatuses, said plurality of information processing apparatuses displaying images and outputting sounds based on said image data and said sound data from said plurality of information providing apparatuses; wherein each of said plurality of information providing apparatuses comprises: first receiving means for receiving a TV program; generating means for generating said image data and said sound data representing said TV program; and transmitting means for transmitting said image data and said sound data over said network; wherein each of said plurality of information processing apparatuses comprises: storage controlling means for storing connecting information and a name of said information providing apparatus, said connecting information being set to specify whether or not to establish connection with said information providing apparatus so that one of said plurality of information providing apparatuses is automatically selected to be connected according to the stored connecting information and the name of said one of said plurality of information providing apparatuses; connection controlling means for, if said connecting information is set to establish connection with said information providing apparatus, establishing connection with said one of said plurality of information providing apparatuses based on the stored name of said one of said plurality of information providing apparatuses; and reception controlling means for, if connection is established with said one of said plurality of information providing apparatuses, receiving said image data and said sound data from said one of said plurality of information providing apparatuses, wherein each of the plurality of the information processing apparatuses acquires a version of a server program used by the plurality of the information providing apparatuses and selects one of the plurality of the information providing apparatuses for connection according to the version of the server program, the version of the server program indicating at least a function selected from a recording function, a tuner function, and a multiple-streams function of the plurality of the information providing apparatuses, wherein the plurality of information providing apparatuses detect whether each of the plurality of information processing apparatuses is processing same content and send a request to each information processing apparatus that is processing the same content to boot up a chat means for chatting the same content, and wherein the plurality of information providing apparatuses process a channel change request from one of the plurality of information processing apparatuses based on a predetermined priority of the one of the plurality of information processing apparatuses.