Patent ID: 8225358

Claim:
A content recommendation apparatus that recommends to a user VOD contents distributed under a Video On Demand (VOD) system, comprising: a content information storage unit, which stores meta data of each VOD content and a preliminary rank which indicates a preliminary recommendation rank assigned previously to that VOD content; a TV program acquisition unit, which acquires meta data of each TV program that is broadcast at a given point of time; a similarity calculation unit, which calculates a degree of similarity of each VOD content to TV programs broadcast at a given point of time by referring to the content information storage unit when the meta data concerned is acquired by the TV program acquisition unit; a recommendation rank correction unit, which calculates a rank change quantity of each VOD content on basis of the degree of similarity calculated by the similarity calculation unit, the rank change quantity becoming a larger value as the degree of similarity becomes higher, to correct the preliminary rank of each VOD content by lowering the preliminary rank by the calculated rank change quantity; and a recommendation information providing unit, which provides recommendation information that includes the corrected preliminary ranks to the user.