Patent ID: 7039936

Claim:
A system for receiving a digital broadcast signal, comprising: a digital broadcast receiving apparatus; and a plurality of digital signal processing equipment connected to said digital broadcast receiving apparatus said digital broadcast receiving apparatus including: a receiver operable to receive the digital broadcast signal, a decoder operable to decode the received signal into decoded data selected from the group consisting of pulse code modulated (PCM) audio data and compressed video and audio data, an interface operable to transmit data to and receive data from at least one of said plurality of digital signal processing equipment, the transmitted data including the decoded data, and a picture plane operable to display at least one of a control panel and a registration panel, said control panel including an equipment selection region and an operation selection region, said equipment selection region displaying a list of registered ones of said connected digital signal processing equipment and an associated button area for each of said registered digital signal processing equipment whereby at least one of said registered digital signal processing equipment is selected from the list by selecting its associated button area, said registration panel including a connected equipment region and a registered equipment region, said registered equipment region displaying the list of said registered digital signal processing equipment, said connected equipment region displaying a list of said connected digital signal processing equipment and an associated mark area for each of said connected digital signal processing equipment, said mark area indicating whether the associated one of said connected digital signal processing equipment is registered or unregistered whereby changing the indication in a given mark area registers or unregisters its associated digital signal processing equipment and thereby adds the associated digital signal processing equipment to or removes the associated digital signal processing equipment from the list of said registered digital signal processing equipment that is displayed in said registered equipment region of said registration panel and that is displayed in said equipment selection region of said control panel, wherein when the number of the registered digital signal processing equipment is less than a maximum number of registered digital signal processing equipment, the associated digital signal processing equipment may be registered, and when the number of the registered digital signal processing equipment is the maximum number of registered digital signal processing equipment, the associated digital signal processing equipment may not be registered until at least one of the registered digital signal processing equipment is unregistered or disconnected from said digital broadcast receiving apparatus, the maximum number of registered digital signal processing equipment being less than a maximum number of connected digital signal processing equipment.