Patent ID: 7227953

Claim:
An MPEG data selector comprising: a digital interface having an input terminal receiving digital data which includes MPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-TS) data of digital contents and copy control information for use in preventing unauthorized copying of said digital contents, a first output terminal outputting said MPEG-TS data, and a second output terminal outputting a copy control signal, said digital interface extracting said MPEG-TS data from said digital data received, and detecting said copy control information from said digital data to generate said copy control signal indicating the contents of said copy control information; a copy-protected-state indicating MPEG-TS data output unit holding copy-protected-state indicating MPEG-TS data and having an output terminal outputting said copy-protected-state indicating MPEG-TS data, said copy-protected-state indicating MPEG-TS data being obtained by previously compressing and encoding, in MPEG format, a message representing that said copy control information indicates a copy-protected state; and an MPEG-TS data selecting unit having a first input terminal connected to said first output terminal of said digital interface, a second input terminal connected to said second output terminal of said digital interface, a third input terminal connected to said output terminal of said copy-protected-state indicating MPEG-TS data output unit, and an output terminal outputting to-be-recorded MPEG-TS data, said MPEG-TS data selecting unit selecting either said MPEG-TS data or said copy-protected-state indicating MPEG-TS data as said to-be-recorded MPEG-TS data according to the contents of said copy control information given by said copy control signal.