Patent ID: 8041750

Claim:
A system comprising: one or more server computers configured to: generate an interface at a site on a network for display on a user computer, a plurality of media files provided by a plurality of media file providers being made available to said user computer via said network using said interface; define a set of metadata attributes relating to said media files, each of said metadata attributes of the set having a respective predetermined location in said interface regardless of media file or media file provider; receive said plurality of media files provided by said plurality of media file providers via the network, the received media files for use with said interface; associate metadata attributes from the set of metadata attributes with each of said received media files; map each of said associated metadata attributes to its respective predetermined location in said interface, so that in said interface each of said associated metadata attributes appears at its respective predetermined location in said interface for all of said media files and media file providers, wherein said interface comprises: a channel description portion to display a plurality of channel selections corresponding to the plurality of media files provided by the plurality of media file providers for selection by said user; a show description portion to display one or more show selections, and in response to user selection of one of the channel selections said show description portion displays only those show selections corresponding to the channel selection; an episode description portion to display one or more episode selections, and in response to user selection of one of the show selections said episode description portion displays only those episode selections corresponding to the show selection; and a viewer to view media file content at the user computer, the media file content corresponding to the channel, show and episode selections made by the user using the interface; determining a sequence in which a user is to experience media content corresponding to said plurality of media files based on input from the user and without regard to the ordering of unique identifiers in the data file; and determining media content of the media files other than media content corresponding to said plurality of media files for said user to experience while waiting for said user input.