Patent ID: 8832291

Claim:
A broadcast transport stream distribution system, comprising: a distribution apparatus which distributes broadcast transport streams in which transport streams of broadcast program contents are packetized via a communication line through an Internet Protocol network; and a user terminal device which receives the broadcast transport streams to be distributed from the distribution apparatus via the communication line, wherein the distribution apparatus includes: a partial transport stream generation unit which counts standard clocks to generate time stamps corresponding to a transmission rate of the broadcast transport streams and which adds the time stamps in turn to the packets of the broadcast transport streams, respectively, to generate a partial transport stream; an Internet Protocol transmission processing unit which converts the partial transport streams into Internet Protocol packets to transmit them at a predetermined rate; and an Internet Protocol transmission rate control unit which generates reference time stamps equivalent to the time stamps respectively added to the packets of the transport streams by generating and counting reference clocks equivalent to the standard clocks, corrects the reference time stamps based on standard time, extracts in turn time stamps of arbitrary transport stream packets from the Internet Protocol packets output from the Internet Protocol transmission processing unit, compares the extracted time stamps with the reference time stamps, respectively, and, if a result of comparison indicates that any of the extracted time stamps does not coincide with a corresponding one of the reference time stamps, determines a difference between time values indicated by said any extracted time stamp and said corresponding reference time stamp, calculates a correction value of a transmission rate, which corresponds to the difference between the time values, and controls a transmission rate of the Internet Protocol transmission unit on the basis of the correction value to eliminate the difference value up to a specified number of broadcast transport streams or up to a number of transmitted Internet Protocol packets, and the user terminal device includes: a buffer which temporarily store the Internet Protocol packets to be transmitted via the communication line; an Internet Protocol packet processing unit which takes out the Internet Protocol packets from the buffer in turn to extract the partial transport stream; and a broadcast transport stream reproduction unit which reproduces the broadcast transport streams by extracting time stamps from the Internet Protocol packets of the partial transport stream extracted by the Internet Protocol packet processing unit and by re-arranging the Internet Protocol packets on a time axis on the basis of the corresponding-time stamps.