Broadcast system having a transmitter and a receiver for low quality and high quality streams based on the same content, the receiver and program

摘要

A broadcast system has digital receiving apparatuses that imitate deteriorated reproduction that is observed in analog receiving apparatuses when a transmission path failure occurs, thus preventing the audiences, who are accustomed to the analog broadcasting, from sensing discomfort at the digital broadcasting. A transmission apparatus causes encoding units 11 and 12 to generate low- and high-quality streams based on the same contents, and transmits these streams onto a transmission path while delaying the high-quality stream. In the receiving apparatuses, a reproduction unit 25 reproduces the high-quality stream in a normal state, while packets of the low-quality stream received during a time period T until the current time are accumulated in an accumulation unit 22. If a transmission path failure occurs, a reproduction control unit 26 causes the reproduction unit 25 to reproduce, instead of the high-quality stream, the accumulated packets of the low-quality stream.