Patent ID: 8381249

Claim:
A method for providing guidance for videos on the Internet, comprising: accessing a plurality of Internet sites to identify videos provided by the Internet sites; storing metadata from the Internet sites for each of the identified videos; associating guidance application data from a guidance application database with the metadata for each of the identified videos; generating a media display indicating to a user each video of a subset of the identified videos, wherein the media display includes the guidance application data associated with each indicated video; in response to the user selecting a first category from a plurality of scope narrowing criteria categories, displaying a first window in which a first plurality of selectable criteria elements of the first category are displayed simultaneously with the media display, wherein: the plurality of scope narrowing criteria categories are arranged according to a first pre-selected user preference, wherein the first pre-selected user preference is customized by the user in advance of the displaying of the first window; in response to the user selecting a second category from the plurality of scope narrowing criteria categories, displaying a second window in which a second plurality of selectable criteria elements of the second category are displayed simultaneously with the media display, wherein: the displayed second plurality of selectable criteria elements are limited in response to a selected criteria element of the first plurality of selectable criteria elements; and the subset of the videos indicated in the media display are selected according to the criteria element of the first plurality of selectable criteria elements that is selected by the user and a criteria element of the second plurality of selectable criteria elements that is selected by the user; and in response to the user selecting said criteria element of the second plurality of selectable criteria elements, displaying a third window in which one or more recommended videos from the plurality of accessed Internet sites is displayed simultaneously with the media display, wherein: the one or more recommended videos is selected according to a second pre-selected user preference.