Patent ID: 8156531

Claim:
A receiving device comprising: an input section operable to input user selections of a selected channel set made up of a collection of channels that are compiled together as a channel set according to at least one common rule, the channels in any given channel set being made up of information channels including Net content; a memory section containing channel set descriptions of each of the channel sets including data by which to identify information content including Net content corresponding to the channels of each channel set; an input analyzing section connected to receive the user selections input through the input section and to analyze each received user selection to output an indication of a selection of a selected channel set when the user selection designates the selected channel set for selection; a channel set managing section connected to receive the indication of the selection of the selected channel set from the input analyzing section to obtain a channel set description from the memory section corresponding to the selected channel set when the selected channel set is different from a current channel set; and a channel managing section responding to the obtained channel set description in order to change channels within the selected channel set when channel change instructions have also been input by the input section, wherein: the channel set descriptions contain therein a name of a second channel set description listing lists of multiple channels for each of the channels; and the second channel set description contains therein an identifier for one of the channel set descriptions that references the second channel set description.