Patent 7421187 was granted and assigned to Sony on September, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In an AV server system, it is facilitated to grasp the entire structure of an AV server and determine which position a failed resource assumes in the entire AV server. On the basis of a file which describes resources of the AV server, resources forming the AV server are displayed in a hierarchical form on a screen. When a fault has occurred in any resource, the range from the highest class down to the class to which the failed resource belongs is displayed on one picture.