Patent ID: 8505052

Claim:
A distributing system comprising: a distributing station for distributing digital contents and attribute information indicating an attribute of said contents; and a plurality of reception apparatuses having: reception means for receiving said digital contents and said attribute information distributed from the distributing station, output means for outputting the received digital contents, and selection means for allowing a user to select the digital contents, wherein the digital contents are processed in a filtering process by comparing selection information indicating user preferences with attribute information assigned to the digital contents, said selection information being expressed with an n-dimensional vector S comprising user preference items as elements, wherein each element identifies a preference intensity, wherein an element of vector S identities a positive value as a preference intensity when the user has demonstrated a positive preference for the element and identifies a negative value as a preference intensity when the user has demonstrated a negative preference for the element, and wherein the filtering process comprises: (1) a performing process for performing a calculation between a vector A related to the attribute information and the vector S; and (2) a determining process for determining whether to select the digital content based on the result of the calculation, wherein Vector S is generated by using Vector A for a program which is reproduced for a specified period of time or longer, and wherein vector S is generated by changing a weighting factor for a reserved program and a realtime reproduced program.