Patent ID: 8199807

Claim:
A contents providing apparatus comprising: storage which records contents with plural types of formats and reads specified contents to be reproduced, a plurality of output ports which respectively output contents read from the storage, a plurality of decoders which are connected to the output ports and respectively correspond to the plural types of formats, a plurality of channels which respectively provide contents decoded by the decoders, a switcher which selectively derives one of outputs of the decoders to a specified one of the channels, a table which expresses the output ports connected to the decoders corresponding to the plural types of formats and status conditions of the decoders, a monitoring section which monitors during use, available and unavailable status conditions for each of the decoders, registers the status conditions into the table, and a connecting section to assign an available one of the output ports which corresponds to the format of the specified contents based on the table and to connect an output of the decoder connected to the assigned output port to the specified channel via the switcher.