US Patent 7106382 Information processing system and information processing apparatus

An information processing system and apparatus receiving a television broadcast includes: a direct receiving unit directly receiving television broadcast waves; an indirect receiving unit indirectly receiving the television broadcast waves; and a switching unit determining whether the television broadcast waves are to be received by the direct receiving unit or the indirect receiving unit by switching between the direct receiving unit and the indirect receiving unit based on their reception conditions. With this configuration, it is possible to obtain television-broadcast video signals from the selected receiving unit. The indirect receiving unit is preferably formed of a communication device provided with a wireless cellular telephone function using a wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) system in which signals having a large transmission capacity can be transmitted and received, or a communication device provided with a wireless LAN communication function.