Patent ID: 8848782

Claim:
A reception apparatus comprising: circuitry configured to receive compressed/encoded data from a predetermined number of external apparatuses connected via a network, decode the received compressed/encoded data to obtain received data, perform data processing so that information based on the received data, which have been transmitted from the predetermined number of external apparatuses, is displayed on corresponding display windows on a screen, respectively, set sizes of the display windows respectively corresponding to the predetermined number of external apparatuses, set a bit rate value priority option to at least one of the predetermined number of external apparatuses, determine an encoding bit rate of each external apparatus corresponding to the set size of the display window based on a correspondence relation between the set size of the display window and the encoding bit rate and based on whether the bit rate value priority option is set for the at least one of the predetermined number of external apparatuses, transmit information regarding each of the determined encoding bit rates to each of the corresponding external apparatuses, and set the correspondence relation between the set size of the display window and the encoding bit rate for each of the predetermined number of external apparatuses.