Netflix’s second $1 Million prize Contest will have scientists take on the even more difficult problem of recommending movies for customers that rate few movies, and this time will use demographic and behavioral data to predict customer rentals.

“The new data set, providing more than 100 million data points, will include, among other things, information about renters’ ages, genders, ZIP codes, genre ratings and previously chosen movies. As with the first Netflix Prize, all data provided is anonymous and cannot be associated with a specific Netflix member.”

The second Netflix $1 Million prize will be broken into two awards, with the leading team at 6 months and 18 months winning a $500,000 progress prizes.

While the first prize focused on customers that rated more than 50 movies, the second contest will enable Netflix to more accurately recommend movies to customers that are just getting started or rate movies infrequently.

More information will be available on the Netflix Prize website soon.