Patent ID: 7296064

Claim:
A method implemented by an apparatus for processing multimedia content and user preferences pertaining to multimedia consumption, the method comprising: storing, in a multiple hierarchical data structure, personal information to identify a user; storing, in the multiple hierarchical data structure, user preference information of said identified user, wherein the user preference information includes a hierarchical tree structure of preference items, and each of said preference items has a corresponding preference value configured to indicate preference of multimedia information of the identified user in searching and recommending the mulitmedia content for the identified user, wherein said each of said preference items and the corresponding preference value are described in a respective element in the hierarchical tree structure and wherein at least one of said preference items includes a preference condition which applies to the at least one of said preference items and the corresponding preference value is set according to the preference condition, and the preference condition includes a location at which the multimedia content is consumed; storing, in the multiple hierarchical data structure, a usage history to record events of the multimedia consumption of the identified user, wherein the usage history specifies the preference condition, a user action type, an identifier of the multimedia content, and a user action time for each of the recorded events, wherein the user action time specifies when each of the recorded events happened and the user action type specifies a type of each of the recorded events from a group of user action types that include pause and fast forward; updating the at least one of said preference items in the hierarchical tree structure based on the usage history, wherein updating the at least one of said preference items includes altering the corresponding preference value based at least in part on a number of uses of the multimedia information corresponding to the at least one of said preference items; and searching and recommending the multimedia content for the identified user using the updated preference item and the altered corresponding preference value.