Patent ID: 7298966

Claim:
A recording device for receiving a digital broadcast, which is a sequential transmission of a plurality of packets, and for recording groups of the plurality of received packets onto a recording medium in response to a record request made by a user viewing a playback of the digital broadcast, wherein the playback of the digital broadcast includes a buffering delay associated with an accumulation of a group of the plurality of packets of the digital broadcast in a playback buffer and associated with a conversion of the group of packets into video frames to be played back, said recording device comprising: a record buffer operable to store the groups of the plurality of packets of the digital broadcast; a copying unit operable to receive and copy the groups of the plurality of packets of the digital broadcast into said record buffer; and a recording unit operable to, when the user makes the record request, record one group of packets of the groups of packets stored in said record buffer onto the recording medium and operable to further record subsequent groups of packets, being subsequent groups of packets from the sequential transmission following the one group of packets which are subsequently copied into said record buffer by said copying unit, onto the recording medium, wherein: said record buffer is operable to store a preceding group of packets, which is a group of packets preceding the one group of packets from the sequential transmission; said recording device further comprises a buffer management table operable to associate a display start time of video frames, which is a time corresponding to each group of packets stored in said record buffer, with an address of each group of packets in said record buffer; said recording unit is (i) operable to acquire a display record time which is a time of a video frame which is being played back when the user makes the record request, (ii) operable to detect the display start time that is earlier than and closest to the acquired display record time from said buffer management table, wherein each group of packets recorded by said recording unit is stored in said record buffer at an address associated with the detected display start time, and (iii) operable to record, onto the recording medium, the preceding group of packets stored in said record buffer from an address of said record buffer associated with the detected display start time.