Digital broadcasting system, digital broadcasting apparatus, and receiver apparatus for digital broadcasts

A digital broadcasting apparatus which achieves simulated interaction using a digital broadcast, the digital broadcasting apparatus comprising:

• image information storage means for storing a plurality of sets of image data, each of which has an image data identifier;
• control information storage means for storing a plurality of sets of control information, each of which has a control information identifier, and each of which includes link destination information that shows a set of image data and a set of control information for a link destination for the sets of image data, the link destination information showing a combination of an image data identifier of the set of the image data for the link destination and a control information identifier for the set of control information;
• correspondence information storage means for storing correspondence information showing correspondence between the sets of image data and the sets of control information;
• and
• multiplexing transmission means for repeatedly transmitting a plurality of sets of the image data and a plurality of the control information as a multiplexed stream,
• wherein the multiplexing transmission means includes:
• a retrieval unit for retrieving a plurality of sets of image data and corresponding sets of control information shown in the correspondence information;
• a multiplexing unit for successively multiplexing image data and control information retrieved by the retrieval unit, in doing so assigning and writing first image data identification information into the set of image data and control information identification information into the set of control information;
• an image correspondence table generation unit for generating an image correspondence table for each set of image data, each correspondence table having identification information found from the image data identifier of the corresponding set of image data, each image correspondence table including second image data identification information specifying a corresponding set of image data and reproduction time information for the corresponding set of image data;
• and
• an image correspondence table multiplexing unit for reading an image correspondence table corresponding to a set of image data and multiplexing the image correspondence table such that the image correspondence table will be transmitted by the multiplexing transmission means at a time which precedes a transmission of the corresponding set of image data by at least a predetermined time period, the predetermined time period being defined as a time period which allows a digital broadcast reception apparatus which receives the digital broadcast to obtain the second image data identification information specifying a set of image data before starting to extract the image data.