Patent ID: 8533769

Claim:
A digital broadcast receiver comprising: an affiliated station storage unit that, in further association with affiliated station information associating broadcasting stations with their affiliated stations, stores tuning information, obtained from broadcast signals from the broadcasting stations and the affiliated stations and needed for tuning to the respective broadcasting stations, and reception service areas to which the respective broadcasting stations are broadcasting, the reception service areas also being obtained from the broadcast signals from the broadcasting stations and the affiliated stations; a switching history storage unit for storing a motion history of past movement among the reception service areas obtained from the broadcast signals and, in association with each of the reception service areas, switching history information associated with a priority order indicating where, from a given reception service area, the digital broadcast receiver is likely to move next, based on the motion history; and a tuning control unit for tuning to one of the broadcasting stations or one of the affiliated stations in order to receive a program, and obtaining information with which the reception service area of the tuned-in broadcasting station or affiliated station can be inferred; wherein when a received signal becomes currently unreceivable due to motion from a reception service area of one of the broadcasting stations broadcasting a currently viewed/listened to program to another reception service area, the tuning control unit: infers, from the switching history information, a present location to which the digital broadcast receiver is likely to have moved, performs a reception service area inference process to infer a reception service area at the inferred present location, performs an affiliated station identification process to identify, from the affiliated station information for affiliated stations receivable in the inferred present location, one of the affiliated stations corresponding to the broadcasting station broadcasting the currently viewed/listened to program, which can be tuned in within the reception service area of the inferred present location, and preferentially tunes to the affiliated station receivable in the inferred present location as identified by the affiliated station identification process.