Patent ID: 8270901

Claim:
A receiver comprising: a demodulator; a memory; a receiver controller; and a user interface; wherein: said demodulator produces program segments representative of portions of two or more program channels transmitted by at least one broadcaster, the transmitting being of digital information including transmitting error correction and detection information on the program segments coded according to an error-correcting and detecting code; said receiver controller checks the program segments from said demodulator, generates dropout-free program content, and stores at least a portion of said program segments in said memory, the storing including storing of dropout-free program content, wherein the checking of the program segments includes checking the error correction and detection information such that the dropout-free program content has passed the checking of the error correction and detection information; said receiver controller stores channel content information in said memory indicative of the respective program channel of the two or more program channels that is associated with each segment of the dropout-free program content stored in said memory; said user interface specifies a program channel; said receiver controller creates an output signal that includes one or more program segments associated with the specified program channel; said receiver controller performs a program channel content check which depends at least in part on said channel content information, said channel content check producing an acceptable result or an unacceptable result; wherein program content segments to be stored in said memory are checked to make sure they are dropout-free before being stored, and wherein: if said program channel content check produces the acceptable result, said receiver controller includes in said output signal at least a portion of the program content segments stored in said memory which is associated with said specified program channel in preference to other program segments associated with said specified program channel, and if said program channel content check produces the unacceptable result, including the result that there is no usable, stored, dropout-free content available for the specified program channel, or the result that said other program segments on said specified program channel require real-time output, said receiver controller includes in said output signal at least one of said other program segments associated with said specified program channel.