Abstract
The overabundance of DTV (Digital Television) programs precipitates a need for new tools to help people find programs and personalize TV viewing experience. In this paper, we present a multi-agent system that provides personalized and private service in PDRs (Personal Digital Recorders). This paper details the architecture and components of the system. The multi-agent system observes the users' viewing behaviors in the background, updates the users' profiles continuously, and provides different programs for different users according to their respective profile information. It can protect the users' privacy by means of utilizing XML encryption of the reported information and verifying the user's name and password before reporting his/her profile to service provider. This paper also describes the communication mechanism in the multi-agent system.