TRANSMITTER APPARATUS, RECEIVER APPARATUS, AND TRANSMISSION/RECEPTION METHOD

摘要

The conventional art discloses that the transmitting side transmits various kinds of information on a segment-by-segment basis and the receiving side selects and demodulates any one of the segments. However, the conventional art does not disclose anything about inter-segment information association in which the transmitting side associates and transmits various kinds of information on a multiple-segments-by-multiple-segments basis and the receiver side selects and demodulates segments in accordance with the association. Moreover, the conventional art does not refer to achievement of a service effectively using metadata in a system for performing a content distribution preconditioned on the information association. A transmitter apparatus for transmitting contents and the metadata of those contents comprises a transmission unit for transmitting the contents and the metadata of those contents, and is characterized in that the metadata to be transmitted from the transmission unit includes a plurality of pieces of program content information that are in accordance with reproduction elapsed-times of the contents to be transmitted from the transmission unit.