Sony Corporation

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Yosuke Kimoto

Muneki Shimada

Kenjiro Komaki

Toyoshi Okada

Kazuhiro Kanee

An EPG object of a program A to be broadcast from 19:00 to 20:49 is copied to generate a first clone EPG object and a second clone EPG object. 00 minute is set as the relative start time of the first clone EPG object, and 59 minutes is set as the relative end time. 00 minutes is set as the relative start time of the second clone EPG object, and 49 minutes is set as the relative end time. With reference to the relative times, the clone EPG object is allocated to each time zone with a range of one hour. The first clone EPG object of the program A is allocated to a time zone of 19:00 to 19:59, and the second clone EPG object is allocated to a time zone of 20:00 to 20:59. Retrieval is carried out for each time zone. Thus, a program of a predetermined broadcast time can be quickly retrieved.

Receiver, program retrieval method, and receiving method

A management server receives first user identification information and designation information for designating a service which are sent from a user terminal; detects specific information corresponding to a service provider which provides the desired service from a database containing specific information uniquely assigned to each service provider; generates second user identification information based on the detected specific information and the first user identification information; and then transmits the second user identification information to the user terminal. Using the second user identification information, the user terminal accesses the server of the service provider providing the desiring service. This prevents important information such as device IDs from being used when a user receives a service through a network from a service provider other than device manufacturers, and relieves the burden on such service provider upon providing a service.

Method for issuing identification information

Style sheets which define the expression form, etc., of documents in a meta-language (for example, XML) format in which tags which can be defined arbitrarily are used are managed appropriately. A style sheet is given a unique style ID. Since a receiving system is capable of storing style sheets separately from XML documents and managing them, it is unnecessary to add a style sheet to each XML document body and to transmit it, and thus the amount of the data to be transmitted can be reduced. Also, it is possible to protect the style sheets from unauthorized use by attaching key data to the XML document body, so that the style sheets can be managed as authored works. Furthermore, by specifying the other party or by providing a device for performing authentication, limited use of the style sheet becomes possible.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Yosuke Kimoto