Information processing device, information processing method, information provision device, and information provision system

An information processing method comprising:

• receiving input content including a main sound stream and a sub sound stream;
• outputting a sound by separately decoding and reproducing either the main sound stream or the sub sound stream included in the input content;
• and
• generating, by circuitry of an information processing device, feature point information from the main sound stream irrespective of whether the main sound stream is decoded and reproduced to output the sound, wherein
• when an automatic content recognition operation is performed while the sound being output is not from the main sound stream, the generating includes decoding the main sound stream and generating the feature point information to be used in the automatic content recognition operation from a decoding result of the main sound stream,
• the method further includes identifying the input content based on the feature point information generated from the main sound stream, and
• the circuitry of the information processing device is further connected to a network, and checks a reference feature point information database in which content identification information is associated with the feature point information of the main sound stream included in the content, thereby acquiring the content identification information.

An information provision system comprising:

• a content distribution device including first circuitry to distribute content including a main sound stream and a sub sound stream;
• a client device including second circuitry to present the content distributed from the content distribution device with the main sound stream or the sub sound stream, and to generate feature point information from the main sound stream irrespective of whether the main sound stream is presented with the content;
• and
• an information provision server to include a reference feature point information database in which the feature point information generated from the main sound stream of the content is associated with content identification information, and to provide the content identification information corresponding to an inquiry of the feature point information from the client device, wherein
• when an automatic content recognition operation is performed while the sub sound stream is, and the main sound stream is not, presented with the content, the second circuitry decodes the main sound stream and generates the feature point information to be used in the automatic content recognition operation from a decoding result of the main sound stream,
• the second circuitry further identifies the content based on the feature point information generated from the main sound stream, and
• the second circuitry is further connected to a network, and checks the reference feature point information database, thereby acquiring the content identification information.