Patent ID: 7930433

Claim:
A stream distribution system, comprising: a content server device for performing content distribution in a network; a reception terminal device for reproducing a content having a specific format; a plurality of transcoder devices provided in the network, for applying format conversion to a content distributed in the network; and a transcoder management device for searching, in response to a search request sent from the reception terminal device, information on the plurality of transcoder devices, and sending to the reception terminal device, as a search result, a transmission path which runs from the content server device to the reception terminal device via at least one of the plurality of transcoder devices, through which format conversion to a desired content is performed, wherein the transcoder management device has a network state monitoring function for grasping a state of the network, narrows down transmission paths according to the network state, and outputs the obtained result as the search result, and the transcoder management device changes the transmission path to another transmission path according to the network state.