Patent ID: 7149413

Claim:
A video-signal recording and playback apparatus for recording and playing back a video signal of a television-broadcast program, said video-signal recording and playback apparatus comprising: a recording mechanism configured to record a video signal onto an information-recording medium; an extraction mechanism configured to extract a representative picture from a video signal to be recorded; an attachment mechanism configured to associate an evaluation value to the representative picture extracted by said extraction mechanism, said evaluation value being indicative of a degree of likeness of the representative picture to other representative pictures; a preservation mechanism configured to preserve a representative picture extracted by said extracting means in said information-recording medium; and a thinning mechanism configured to reduce a number of representative pictures preserved by said preservation mechanism in said information-recording medium based on said evaluation value, wherein said attachment mechanism is configured to associate the evaluation value to the representative picture by reducing other evaluation values of representative pictures adjacent on a time axis.