Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Yukio Shikatani

Fumiyuki Kato

Yutaka Tomioka

Yoshiaki Kushiki

Nobuaki Tanaka

Kenji Soma

Providing a broadcast system wherein storage of contents on the receiving side and use restriction on the stored contents, etc. can be performed per service provided by contents providers. In a storage-based digital broadcast system wherein contents transmitted from a sending side are stored on a receiving side then reproduced, the sending side transmits service structure information for describing relational structure between services provided by contents providers and reference information for associating the contents with the service structure information in advance, and the receiving side receives and stores service structure information and reference information and uses the received service structure information and reference information to manage storage of contents. It is possible to control contents per service based on service structure information and information that can be reorganized from reference information.

Storage-type broadcast system, transmitter and receiver

An information method and system enables information, from a set of original information which is updated at regular or irregular intervals, to be provided to each information receiving apparatus of respective users via a data transmission path which can be selected in accordance with the type of data to be transferred, stated preferences of the user with regard to providing of data, current operating status of a data communication network, etc. A set of framework data are selected as data which are rarely updated, by monitoring original information that is to be provided, over a suitably long period, and are stored at the information providing apparatus and each information receiving apparatus. Thereafter until a new set of framework data are selected, any differences between newly updated original information and the framework data are obtained as variation data, and transmitted to be stored at each information receiving apparatus, which can reconstitute desired data on request from a user by combining appropriate parts of the locally stored framework and variation data, thereby minimizing the amounts of data which must be transmitted to the information receiving apparatuses.

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Yokohama, Japan

Yukio Shikatani