Patent ID: 7266610

Claim:
A picture distribution system comprising: a receiving apparatus; and a transmitting apparatus in communication with said receiving apparatus for distributing omnidirectional pictures to said receiving apparatus through a network; said transmitting apparatus including, first receiving means for receiving viewpoint information from said receiving apparatus; extracting means for, based on the received viewpoint information, extracting a predetermined area as a first picture from an omnidirectional picture to be sent to said receiving apparatus; and first transmitting means for transmitting, to said receiving apparatus, unit regions obtained by dividing the first picture; and said receiving apparatus including: acquiring means for acquiring the viewpoint information; second transmitting means for transmitting the acquired viewpoint information to said transmitting apparatus; second receiving means for receiving the first picture transmitted from said second transmitting apparatus; storage means for storing the first picture received by said second receiving means; and output means for outputting a second picture as a predetermined area extracted from the stored first picture, the second picture corresponding to the acquired viewpoint information, wherein, based on a motion vector included in the received viewpoint information and a transmission delay of said network, said extracting means determines the next predetermined area to be extracted from the omnidirectional picture.