Patent ID: 7529463

Claim:
A speculative recording device comprising: profile extracting means for extracting a user profile which indicates a preference of a user in viewing programs based on an operation by the user; program list managing means for acquiring attributes of a program; speculation selecting means for selecting a program to be speculatively recorded based on the user profile and the attributes of the program; storage managing means for accumulating program data; speculative recording managing means for erasing the program data accumulated in the storage managing means when necessary and for recording program data selected by the speculation selecting means; user interface controlling means for converting a state of the program data accumulated in the storage managing means between a temporarily-stored state and a permanently-stored state in accordance with a request from the user, wherein the program data accumulated in the storage managing means is in either one of the temporarily-stored state and the permanently-stored state, and the speculative recording managing means erases, among the program data accumulated in the storage managing means, a piece of program data in the temporarily-stored state when necessary and records the program data selected by the speculation selecting means in the temporarily-stored state; communication means for communicating with a network connected with at least one remotely-located program recording device, wherein when the user interface controlling means performs an operation of converting a state of a piece of program data selected by the user from among programs accumulated by the at least one remotely-located program recording device and the program data accumulated in the storage managing means into the permanently-stored state in accordance with a request from the user while utilizing the communication means, if the piece of program data selected by the user is a piece of program data accumulated in one of the at least one remotely-located recording device, the selected piece of program data is taken into the storage managing means via the communication means to be converted into the permanently-stored state; and chasing means for, after beginning a process of accumulating a currently-broadcast program into a file in the temporarily-stored state from a record starting time to an end of the program, beginning to play back the file at a playback starting time.