Patent ID: 7012932

Claim:
A digital broadcast data receiving apparatus comprising: a plurality of broadcast data receivers operable to receive digital broadcast data supplied from a plurality of digital broadcast data sources, respectively, and to output the digital broadcast data; wherein the digital broadcast data comprises program broadcast data relating to a program broadcast and data required to receive the program broadcast, and wherein the program broadcast data and the required data are multiplexed as digital data; and a packet parallel receiver operable to receive; object program broadcast data from the digital broadcast data output of one of said plurality of broadcast data receivers, the object program broadcast data being multiplexed digital broadcast data including program broadcast data relating to an object program broadcast to be viewed by a viewer; and received broadcast data output by said broadcast data receivers other than said one of said plurality of broadcast data receivers; wherein said packet parallel receiver is operable to, in accordance with time division multiplexing, to extract from the object program broadcast data the program broadcast data relating to the object program broadcast to be viewed by the viewer, and to extract from the received broadcast data, data including information to be obtained when a viewer does not watch a broadcast; and wherein said packet parallel receiver comprises: a plurality of input storage circuits operable to receive and temporarily store the digital broadcast data from one of the respective digital broadcast data sources, wherein the digital broadcast data comprises the program broadcast data in packet format multiplexed with the required data in packet format; an input selection circuit operable to sequentially take the stored packets from said plurality of input storage circuits by repeating a process of selecting any of the input storage circuits in which at least one packet is stored and then taking the packet from the selected input storage circuit; and a packet selection circuit operable to select from a sequence of packets sequentially taken by said input selection circuit only packets containing the object program broadcast data and packets containing the data including the information to be obtained even when the viewer does not watch the broadcast.