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 In many situations, it is desirable to produce a rating stream concerning a media presentation. One example of such a presentation is the presidential debates. It is very useful for news organizations and other groups to have an understanding of how the public feels about the different events that occur during a debate.
 One way of obtaining such information is to show a presidential debate to a roomful of people. During the presidential debate, the people in the room can be provided with a knob that they adjust to indicate how they feel about the different events that occur during the presidential debate. The collected information thus gives some indication of how the public feels about the debate. The public's approval or disapproval at different points in the debate can be newsworthy.
 A downside of this system is that such systems do not tend to provide an accurate representation of the opinion of the public at large, since the people in the room tend not to be a representative sample of the public. The members of the panel tend to be from a single area. Additionally, the sample size tends to be far too small to provide an accurate understanding of the public's approval or disapproval of different events that occur during the presentation.
 It is desired to have an improved method of getting a rating information concerning a media presentation that more accurately reflects the opinions of the public.
 The present invention is a method of producing rating data over a network, such as the Internet. By obtaining the stream of rating data across the network, a variety of users from a large geographic area can be polled. In a preferred embodiment, demographic data concerning the users is obtained before or after the polling. The resulting data can more accurately reflect the response of the target population, such as the public at large. The demographic data allows ratings for different groups to be measured.
 In a preferred embodiment, demographic data is collected for each user. The demographic data allows ratings for different demographic sections of the user base to be produced. In a preferred embodiment, demographic data is collected from the target population such as the public at large.
 In one embodiment, weights are used to weight the inputs of the different users to more accurately reflect the demographic profile of the target population, such as the public at large.
 One embodiment of the present invention is a method of obtaining demographic data concerning users, the demographic data including data for a number of profile categories, producing a media and rating indication display at a client unit, the rating information display indicating a user's rating of an element in the media. At the client unit, receiving rating information from a user and transmitting the rating information to a server across a network, selecting at least one indication for at least one profile category to determine a grouping of multiple users at an analysis unit, and combining the rating information from the multiple users.
 Another embodiment of the present invention concerns the synchronization of a media, such as a video stream, with the users' ratings. For events, such as a debate, the synchronization of the video with the rating stream is crucial. If the systems are not synchronized, users will appear to be rating one event during the debate when, in fact, they are rating another event during the debate. This can make the results useless.
 In one embodiment, the clock at the client unit is used to time-stamp rating information. One way of trying to get a synchronization is to rely upon the normal time synchronization of a client unit. Typically, the client unit gets its clock synchronized from a central server. The applicant has found, in many cases, that it is not desirable to rely upon this synchronization. Even with this typical clock synchronization, among the different client units in the country, there can be significant variation. In the method of the present invention, a server provides a time indication to a client at a first time. The client receives the data, concerning the event, at a second time. The client or server is adapted to produce a difference indication of the difference between the first and second time. If the client produces the difference indication, the client transmits the data, such as the rating data, along with the time indication and the difference indication to the server across the network. The client could alternately send information to the server that allows the server to calculate the differential value. The differential value can be added to the indication sent to the client by the central server. In an alternate embodiment, client-based clocks without server synchronization can be used if the client-based clocks can be assured to be sufficiently accurate.
 In a preferred embodiment, the respondent goes to a web page, in which web page information is provided from the web server
 Although a WebTV™ client box is described, it is known that any other client unit, having the required functionality, can be used with the methods and apparatus of the present invention. The web server
 In one embodiment, the web server is a system like Apache/Tomcat. In one embodiment, the analysis program is a Java program. In one embodiment, the display
 If the client is playing stored media information, such as from a DVD, the user will be able to start the media. The rating information will be collected throughout the duration of the media stream. No administrator is required to start and stop the user's rating experience.
 A problem that can occur with rating systems run over networks, such as the Internet, is that the clocks of the different client units fall out of sync. One example is the WebTV™ clocks, which are updated, every so often, from a central server. Typically, however, there is still a possibility of a significant discrepancy between different client units. This can be a tremendous problem for the rating system, if the rating system relies upon the internal clock of the client device. For example, looking at
 When a storage medium is used to store the media presentation, in a preferred embodiment, the media presentation includes a special sync event that occurs during the media presentation. The sync event may be the pont at which the user starts to play the stored media. Other sync points can be used as well. The user presses a button on the occurrence of the sync event. This information is then provided to the server, which can then figure out, for that member, the position of other events relative to the sync event. The media presentation can include a DVD, video tape or any other stored medium presentation.
 Alternately, the sync signal can be contained in the broadcast media. For example, if a television program is broadcast at different times in different locations in the country, in one embodiment, the client unit uses a synchronization signal embedded in the broadcast to determine information concerning the synchronization. For example, the client unit can determine where in the program the user is watching or that a user has started to watch the program. More generally, the timing synchronization signal may also be embedded in the media stream. The client unit utilizes this signal to sync the timestamp of a rating indication or change.
 In a preferred embodiment, the analysis application allows for the selection of groups of users, preferably based on profile category information, during and after the period of ratings data collection. In this manner, the grouping selection is not required to be made beforehand. This allows the analyst to interactively select the groupings to combine into the combined ratings. For example, the user's demographic profile information can be used to produce a grouping of users who are female Democrats from the Midwest. A combined rating steam for this grouping is preferably made by the analysis unit.
 In a preferred embodiment, an administrative interface controls the behavior of client units. This allows the system to initiate and terminate the recordings of rating data as well as the rate at which the clients connect to the server to send the collected ratings data. By controlling the rate of ratings data sent between the client units and the server, the administrative interfaces can ensure that the servers are not flooded with data.
 It will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art that the invention can be implemented in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or character thereof. The presently disclosed embodiments are therefore considered in all respects to be illustrative and not restrictive. The scope of the invention is illustrated by the appended claims rather than the foregoing description, and all changes that come within the meaning and range of equivalents thereof are intended to be embraced herein.