Patent ID: 7577093

Claim:
A data receiving apparatus for receiving packets which store encoded data, comprising: receiving parts for receiving packets, wherein the packets store scalable-encoded data of an image signal; packet-priority-level-information determination parts for determining whether the packets have the information of a level of priority equal to or larger than a value specified according to a processing performance of the data receiving apparatus, wherein the information of a level of priority corresponds to a layer of the scalable-encoded data according to a priority-level setting map in which the layer of the scalable-encoded data is associated with a level of priority and is stored as additional information of the packet, wherein a first layer of the scalable-encoded data associated with a high level of priority includes a first data area of scalable-encoded data of the image signal, and a second layer of the scalable-encoded data associated with a low level of priority includes the first data area and a second data area of scalable-encoded data of the image signal; and decoding parts for decoding data stored in packets selected by the packet-priority-level-information determination parts.