Sony Corporation

Toshio Okada

Tamihei Hiramatsu

Yoshiyuki Sato

Takashi Iwasa

The present invention provides a transmitting apparatus, a transmitting method, a receiving apparatus, a receiving method, and a transmitting and receiving system that allow the maximum waiting time for the beginning of a content to be shortened in a near-on-demand transmission. When the length of a content is denoted by L seconds, the number of channels on which the content is transmitted is denoted by K, and the beginning detecting time of the content on the reception side is denoted by &#x3bb;, if L satisfies the relation of &#x3bb;*(2) (where L and K are contents), the beginning detecting time &#x3bb; can be decreased to L/(2) against L/K as the conventional value. In reality, the transmission side divides L by the ratio of (2) and repeatedly transmits each divided portion (section) on a discrete channel. The reception side connects each divided-portion (section) transmitted on each channel through a buffer memory, with which the maximum waiting time of the minimum divided portion (section) placed at the beginning of the content is used.

Transmitting apparatus, transmitting method, receiving apparatus, receiving method, and transmitting and receiving system

The OD servers, encoders, NOD servers and CPUs supply voice data, character data and remote control data together with the control information. A transmitter modulates the control information and voice data, etc. by the QPSK modulation method. An infrared ray emitter outputs the modulated infrared ray depending on the modulated signal. A receiving apparatus reproduces acoustic signal from the modulated infrared ray and displays characters and also transmits the signal corresponding to the remote control data to the transmitting apparatus with the infrared ray. An infrared ray detector receives the modulated infrared ray output from the receiving apparatus. Thereby, with this system, the signal, required by the receiving side or suitable for the condition of the receiving side, supplied through many channels can be transmitted without any restriction on the wiring.

Transmitting apparatus and method, receiving apparatus and method, distribution medium and transmitting system

A voice recording/reproducing apparatus suitable for use in a language laboratory operates with a disk on which are recorded text segments comprising sentences and a table of contents containing text and sentence addresses. Automatic sensing of the division points between sentences in each of the text sections can be performed. Only the end portion of a sentence may be readily reproduced, and the division point following the sentence may be finely adjusted. Desired audio data may be quickly retrieved by rough retrieval operations, in which the time code is advanced or reversed by a large amount, followed by fine retrieval operations, in which the time code is advanced or reversed by a small amount. One of several pronunciation practice modes may be selected. A reduced reproduction speed capability allows a student to hear fine pronunciation of words with an invariant pitch.

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Tokyo, Japan

Toshio Okada