A movie browsing system may use a combination of long term and session based preferences to help a user browse movies using microcategories. The user preferences may be stored as microcategory weights, where the session based weights may change during a session as the system learns the types of movies a user wishes to see at that time. The long term microcategory weights may change at a slower rate than the session weights. The system may present a diverse set of microcategories to a user in an effort to diverge the search and learn the user's current interest, and may refine the weights as the user browses to converge to a desired movie. A user interface may operate on a television screen with a minimum of user input controls to navigate the browsing system while still collecting user preferences.