Patent ID: 7206031

Claim:
A receiver for receiving a digital broadcast, comprising: a channel-up/channel-down means for switching received virtual channels in increasing or decreasing order; a channel map comprising: a registration channel map for registering received sub-channels; and a skip channel map for registering a subset of the received sub-channels to be skipped, wherein a virtual channel corresponding to a sub-channel in the subset of the received sub-channels is skipped when the corresponding received virtual channel is switched to by the channel-up/channel-down means; a channel registration means for registering a received sub-channel on the registration channel map by the unit of a physical channel, wherein all received sub-channels for a given physical channel are registered on the registration channel map; and a skip channel registration means for registering a received sub-channel to be skipped on the skip channel map by the unit of a sub-channel, wherein only sub-channels designated to be skipped are registered on the skip channel map, wherein a sub-channel to be skipped is selected independently of a physical channel corresponding to the sub-channel.