Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Minoru Sota

Daiki Matsuura

Keiichi Shirasuka

Soichiro Matsumoto

Tadashi Sakaguchi

An unreceivability detector () that, based on various information obtained from a signal received from a broadcasting station of a digital broadcast program being viewed/listened to, detects that the received signal of that broadcasting station is currently unreceivable and outputs an unreceivability notification, an affiliated station memory () that stores channel information of the program being viewed/listened to and channel information of a station affiliated with that broadcasting station, and a tuning control unit () that, when it receives an unreceivability notification from the unreceivability detector, retrieves the channel information of the affiliated station from the affiliated station memory () and permits the program of the affiliated station to be viewed/listened to, if it is currently in a receivable state, and outputs an instruction to make a channel search for an affiliated station if no affiliated station is stored in the affiliated station memory are provided. When the program being viewed/listened to becomes unviewable/unlistenable, the time during which program viewing/listening is interrupted can be shortened.

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Tokyo, Japan

Minoru Sota