Patent ID: 8369341

Claim:
A multiplexing apparatus, comprising: at least one multiplexing buffer for inputting thereinto encoded units to which priorities have been added to temporarily store thereinto the inputted encoded units; a multiplexing control device for selecting, for each unit time, encoded units which have data amounts which collectively can be transmitted within the unit time according to a total data amount set for the unit time, the multiplexing control device selecting the encoded units in order of priority based upon both the priorities and data amounts of the encoded units; a multiplexing device for multiplexing the selected encoded units based upon the control from the multiplexing control device to output the multiplexed encoded units for transmission by a transmitting device within the unit time, the non-selected encoded units for the unit time being rejected for transmission by the transmitting device; and a transmission buffer for temporarily storing an output of the multiplexing device; and a transmitting device for transmitting data stored in the transmission buffer at an arbitrary timing, wherein the multiplexing apparatus receives as input a plurality of encoded units of a same media type to which different priorities have been added, the multiplexing control unit considering the different priorities of the encoded units of the same media type when selecting the encoded units to be multiplexed by the multiplexing device, and wherein the multiplexing control device provisionally selects the encoded units received for the unit time in the multiplexing buffer every 1/M unit time in order of priority based upon the priorities and the data amount of the encoded units in such a manner that a remaining buffer amount of the transmission buffer is in the vicinity of a certain threshold value, and outputs to the transmission buffer only the provisionally selected encoded units which are contained in the oldest 1/M unit time within the unit time, where M is an integer larger than or equal to 1.