Patent ID: 8074244

Claim:
A receiving method of receiving streaming content data from a server by communicating with the server via a network, said method comprising: receiving partial data of a plurality of streaming contents from the server as zapping data, and storing the zapping data of the respective streaming contents in a storage unit; generating video data by reading out from the storage unit and by decoding by a first decoding unit zapping data of one of the streaming contents selected as a subject to be replayed from the zapping data stored in the storage unit and displaying the generated video data on a display unit; receiving from the server, if the video data generated from the selected zapping data is continuously displayed on the display unit for more than a predetermined time period, data of the streaming content corresponding to the selected zapping data by communicating with the server via the network; generating video data by decoding by a second decoding unit the received data of the streaming content corresponding to the selected zapping data; and switching the video data displayed on the display unit from the video data generated from the selected zapping data to the video data generated from the received data of the streaming content wherein in said switching step, a time-stamp of the video data decoded by the first decoding unit and generated from the selected zapping data is sequentially compared with a time-stamp of the video data decoded by the second decoding unit and generated from the received data of the streaming content, and the video data displayed on the display unit is switched at a timing when the two time-stamps match.