Information processing apparatus and method therefor in a data transfer network

An information processing system in a multi-channel data transfer network, wherein said information processing system serves as a data supply side and includes a host computer, an information processing device, a switching device and a plurality of terminal devices, wherein said host computer generally controls said information processing device and said switching device and receives requests for reproduction of video/audio data from any of said plurality of terminal devices and transmits the requests for reproduction to said information processing device and controls the circuit connection of said switching device so that the reproduced video/audio data is supplied from said data processing device to each of said plurality of terminal devices which is a source of generating the request for reproduction,

• characterized in that said information processing device comprises:
• random-accessible large capacity storage means for storing digital data of a plurality of video/audio softs previously allocated to channels, every predetermined blocks in dispersion, wherein the stored digital data can be a combination of conventional video contents and game contents;
• control means having management information which indicates file names of the plural video/audio softs, recording positions in said random-accessible large capacity storage means, and allocated channel numbers, receiving a request for designating reproduction of any one data of the plural video/audio softs from an external, and designating reproduction of a data file of one video/audio soft corresponding to the request of reproduction-designation to said random-accessible large capacity storage means every time the request command is inputted;
• and
• decoder means having a plurality of output channels simultaneously outputting video/audio soft data in parallel, registering the management information transferred from said control means, directly accessing the random-accessible large capacity storage means to intermittently read out the video/audio soft data designated by said control means from said random-accessible large capacity storage means based on the management information, every blocks in dispersion to be decoded, and thereafter continuously outputting the requested video/audio soft data in analog form from a channel of a designated number.

An information processing method in a multi-channel data transfer network, wherein said information processing method is performed on a data supply side and comprises:

• storing digital data of a plurality of video/audio softs previously allocated to channels, every predetermined blocks in dispersion, in random-accessible large capacity storage means, wherein the stored digital data can be a combination of conventional video contents and game contents;
• receiving a request for designating reproduction of any one data of the plural video/audio softs from an external, and designating reproduction of a data file of one video/audio soft corresponding to the request of reproduction-designation to the random-accessible large capacity storage means every time the request command is inputted;
• registering management information which indicates file names of the plural video/audio softs, recording positions in the random-accessible large capacity storage means, allocated channel numbers and the like;
• confirming whether or not there exists a vacant channel based on the management information;
• directly accessing the random-accessible large capacity storage means to intermittently read out the designated video/audio soft data by time division every predetermined blocks from the random-accessible large capacity storage means based on the management information;
• and
• decoding the intermittently read out data by time division and continuously outputting the read out data in analog form from a channel of the designated number after subject to D/A conversion.