Patent ID: 8170117

Claim:
A digital broadcast receiving apparatus comprising: a plurality of digital broadcast receivers; a plurality of decoders; a switching unit which automatically switches channels of a digital broadcast receiver, which a viewer does not normally use to view a broadcast, of said plurality of digital broadcast receivers; a storage unit which stores a plurality of intra-frame prediction coding data for each channel; a detection unit which detects reception timings of intra-frame prediction coding data for each channel; a determination unit which allocates individual channels to said plurality of digital broadcast receivers and determines a channel switching timing, based on the timings detected by said detection unit, such that the reception timings of intra-frame prediction coding data of the individual channels do not overlap; a first output unit which, when the viewer has switched channels to be viewed, outputs, from said storage unit, intra-frame prediction coding data stored immediately before switching to a newly selected channel, during a period from the point of switching to reception of intra-frame prediction coding data from the newly selected channel; a second output unit which outputs received data from a digital broadcast receiver which the viewer normally uses to view a broadcast, during a period except for the period; a save unit which selectively saves or deletes inter-frame prediction coding data for each channel; and a third output unit which outputs the inter-frame prediction coding data together with the intra-frame prediction coding data while the save unit is saving the inter-frame prediction coding data.