was received from a user who was operating an interface that provided media selection of items provided by an hbo video on demand service provider and accordingly the populated screen 620 is generated using the description data provided from an hbo metadata source returning again to fig4 in addition to capturing and processing metadata from a plurality of metadata sources techniques and systems according to the present invention also distribute the processed metadata to various client devices distribution of processed metadata can be based on queries from the various clients and therefore the query interfaces 420 424 may vary dependent on the system context and or the clients 39 capabilities according to exemplary embodiments of the present invention the system can communicate metadata information to clients using a schema independent protocol this feature enables the software code for client devices to be very generic since the client does not need to know the source nor schema of the information being requested for example the client can process hbo movie metadata and movielink movie metadata in the same way a schema independent interface 420 424 is based on the type of information stored rather than being specific to the allowable set of fields that are stored based on the storage schema in a schema independent interface the information as to what types of information are stored would.