Contents receiving apparatus obtaining application control information and method thereof

A contents receiving apparatus for obtaining application control information, the apparatus comprising:

• an application control information receiving unit which receives application control information, including effective duration information, from a server;
• an effective duration determining unit which determines whether a current control time point is within a time period represented by the effective duration information;
• an application control information requesting unit which automatically selectively requests other application control information from the server in response to the determination by the effective duration determining unit;
• a storing unit which stores the received application control information in a memory;
• and
• a renewing unit which receives renewed application control information from the server, the renewed application control information corresponding to the stored application control information, and renews the stored application control information in the memory based on the received renewed application control information,
• wherein the application control information receiving unit receives the other application control information in response to the selectively requesting, and
• wherein the contents receiving apparatus is implemented in hardware,
• wherein said receiving application control information and said automatically selectively requesting are at a time point needed by the contents receiving apparatus and not dependent on transmission periods, and
• wherein the application control information the renewed application control information are temporally linked to each other using previous and next links.

A non-transitory computer readable recording medium having embodied thereon a computer program for executing a method of using application control information to control operation of applications, the method comprising:

• receiving application control information, including effective duration information, from a server;
• determining whether a current control time point is within a time period represented by the effective duration information;
• automatically selectively requesting other application control information from the server in response to the determining;
• receiving said other application control information from the server in response to the selectively requesting;
• and
• determining, based on the application control information, whether to continue or end execution of currently running applications, and whether to start execution of new applications,
• wherein said receiving application control information and said automatically selectively requesting are at a time point needed by the contents receiving apparatus and not dependent on transmission periods,
• wherein the application control information is stored on the computer readable recording medium and comprises:
• an effective duration used to determine whether application control information is effective;
• a previous application control information uniform resource locator (URL) indicative of a previous application control information used before the effective duration;
• and
• a next application control information URL indicative of a next application control information used after the effective duration.

A non-transitory computer readable recording medium having embodied thereon a computer program for executing a method of obtaining application control information for a contents receiving apparatus, the method comprising:

• receiving application control information, including effective duration information, from a server;
• determining whether a current control time point is within a time period represented by the effective duration information;
• automatically selectively requesting other application control information from the server in response to the determining,
• receiving said other application control information from the server in response to the selectively requesting;
• storing the application control information in a memory;
• receiving renewed application control information corresponding to the stored application control information;
• and
• renewing the stored application control information in the memory based on the received renewed application control information,
• wherein said receiving application control information and said automatically selectively requesting are at a time point needed by the contents receiving apparatus and not dependent on transmission periods, and
• wherein the application control information the renewed application control information are temporally linked to each other using previous and next links.