Patent ID: 7119849

Claim:
A multi-screen synthesis apparatus comprising: a writing device that writes video data and OSD image data into a memory; a reading device that reads the video data and the OSD image data from the memory, based on layout information; a display control device that displays the video data and the OSD image data simultaneously on a common display device; a frame decimation device that decimates frames of the video data to be written into the memory; a control device that controls decimation of the frames of the video data to be written into the memory; an attribute-determining device that determines attributes of the OSD image data, and a display priority-determining device that determines display priority of the video data based on the layout information, and wherein said control device controls said frame decimation device to decimate the frames of the input video data determined by said display priority-determining device to be lower in display priority on the basis of the attributes of the OSD image, during periods of the drawing of the OSD image is being carried out, in the case that a number of screens to be displayed on said display device exceeds a predetermined number, wherein the attributes are determined based on media attributes attached to BML scripts of broadcast data.