Patent ID: 7689161

Claim:
A broadcast receiver comprising: a smart antenna; a tuner for extracting a signal of a predetermined channel from airwaves received by a smart antenna; a signal processing unit for processing the signal extracted by the tuner; a control unit for performing signal return processing for making a return to a normal reception state when it becomes impossible to receive the airwaves by the smart antenna; and a storage unit for storing past oriented direction decision information for every channel, wherein the signal return processing includes: first signal return processing for retrieving a receivable direction by shifting an oriented direction by a predetermined amount counterclockwise or clockwise from a reference direction using an oriented direction at the time of impossibility of reception as the reference direction and alternately repeating counterclockwise shifts and clockwise shifts while increasing the shift amount; second signal return processing for retrieving a receivable direction while sequentially shifting an oriented direction over all bearings of the antenna; and third signal return processing for waiting until a certain time has elapsed since a point in time of occurrence of impossibility of reception and starting retrieval of a receivable direction when a return to a normal reception state is not made within the certain time, and when impossibility of reception occurs, the control unit: reads the past oriented direction decision information corresponding to a channel at that time out of the storage unit, executes the first signal return processing upon determining that there are many cases where an oriented direction decided for the channel is a direction near an oriented direction at the time of the occurrence of impossibility of reception, executes the second signal return processing upon determining that there are many cases where the oriented direction is a direction distant from an oriented direction at the time of the occurrence of impossibility of reception, and executes the third signal return processing upon determining that there are many cases where the oriented direction is the same direction as an oriented direction at the time of the occurrence of impossibility of reception.