Importance

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Abstract

A broadcast system, method and apparatus providing content on demand. In one embodiment, the disclosed broadcast system includes a server that broadcasts content descriptors to a plurality of clients. The content descriptors describe available content that can be broadcast or potentially be broadcast later by the server. Each client receives the broadcasted content descriptors from the server and updates and maintains a local content descriptor table and a demand data table. Based on the content descriptors, previous access habits of the user and optional user classifications, the client system update demand data indicating the desirability of the pieces of available content. The demand data is fed back to the server and the server then sorts the available content based on the desirability indicated by demand data. The server then broadcasts further descriptive content to the clients. The clients receive the further descriptive content enabling further demand data feedback from the clients to the server regarding the desirability of the pieces of content. The feedback process can be repeated to narrow the list of available client such that the more demanded content is ultimately broadcast by the server to the clients. In various aspects of the present invention, the content descriptors can be sent from the server to the clients in a numerous manners and the demand data can be sent from the clients to the server in numerous manners.

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First Claim