Patent ID: 8365226

Claim:
An information providing apparatus, which can be connected via a communication network to a broadcast receiving terminal that displays electronic contents guide (ECG) information including attribute information expressing contents of a program, comprising: an ECG information storage part that stores the ECG information; a viewer EID processing part that processes viewer emotional identification (EID) information as emotional information expressing a program preference of a viewer of the broadcast receiving terminal; a program EID processing part that processes program EID as emotional information corresponding to the contents of the program; an ECG unit constitution part that constitutes an ECG unit by correlating at least one of the ECG information with the program expressed by the attribute information, and correlates the program EID corresponding to this program with the ECG unit; an EID conformity determination part that determines one or more ECG units provided to the broadcast receiving terminal, based on the program EID correlated with the ECG unit and the viewer EID; and an ECG unit providing part that provides the determined one or more ECG units to the broadcast receiving terminal via the communication network, the program EID and viewer EID each specifying a plurality of emotional parameters, each emotional parameter specifying a plurality of emotional elements, and each emotional element being assigned a quantitative level, each emotional parameter is associated with parameter color information, each emotional element of the emotional parameter is associated with element color information, and the parameter color information for an emotional parameter is obtained by combining the element color information of the emotional elements corresponding to the emotional parameter, wherein the element color information for each emotional element of an emotional parameter is in the form of values of brightness for each one of the three primary colors of red, green, and blue, the parameter color information for an emotional parameter is in the form of values of brightness for each one of the three primary colors of red, green, and blue, and the parameter color information for an emotional parameter is obtained by combining, for the emotional elements corresponding to the emotional parameter, the values of brightness for each one of the three primary colors of red, green, and blue.