Patent ID: 8295674

Claim:
A video signal recording and reproducing apparatus for reproducing a video signal while recording the video signal, comprising: a section configured to receive a broadcast first video signal; a section configured to generate a first digital compressed video signal by compressing the broadcast first video signal along a time axis per a time T 1 : a section configured to record the first digital compressed video signal on a hard disk via a magnetic head; a section configured to read out a second digital compressed video signal recorded in the hard disk prior to the recording of the first digital compressed video signal via the magnetic head which is the same as said magnetic head; a section configured to reproduce the read-out second digital compressed video signal at a designated reproduction rate and outputting a second video signal; and a section configured to control the recording of the first digital compressed video signal and the reading-out of the second digital compressed video signal in order to reproduce the second video signal at the reproduction rate while recording the first video signal, wherein, when a reproduction is not started at the designated rate before a recorded amount of the first digital compressed video signal exceeds a predetermined capacity of the hard disk, the first digital compressed video signal which was recorded at an earliest time is sequentially updated and recorded, wherein, the time T 1 is set to be longer than T, where the time T is defined as a sum of seek time required for moving the head to write the unit of the first digital compressed video signal onto the disk, time required for writing the unit of the first digital compressed video signal onto the disk, seek time required for moving the head to read the unit of the second digital compressed video signal from the disk, and time required for reading the unit of the second digital compressed video signal from the disk.