Maxell, Ltd.

Hitachi Maxell, Limited

Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.

Satoshi Mio

Hiroyuki Koreeda

When download operations get started in unison in conformity to RSS metafile delivery time-and-date information, the traffic is temporarily concentrated to a server, resulting in the risk of a system failure or else. In addition, it is inevitable to periodically check whether an RSS file on Web server is updated or not; so, users must delete update-unnecessary RSS files from those objects to be monitored. In view of this, the periodical update check timing of download control information is dispersed, thereby scattering download requests to the server. The download control information is provided with the information indicating whether such download control information is put under update management and/or expire time-and-date information in case the update management is to be done, whereby an information processing apparatus performs, based on the information, erase processing of the download control information when the download processing is completed.

Download control device

By deciding procedures for downloading content data and downloading key information, a safe service is provided for a content distributor and a method which can start playback before completion of the downloading of the content data is provided, thereby providing a technique easy for a user. A receiver has: an interface unit being adapted to download encoded content data and key information for decoding the content data from a communication line; a storage unit being adapted to store the downloaded content data and key information from the interface unit; and a control unit which decodes the content data outputted from the storage unit using the key information. The control unit downloads the key information after the content data is downloaded entirely.

Growing community of inventors

Yokohama, Japan

Satoshi Mio