US Patent 7209639 Recording apparatus and recording method

A program controller decides extension of a broadcast time of the program content according to program information, calculates the total program time period including the extension time period, calculates an optimum recording rate from the total program time period and the recording capacity, sets the recording rate of new contents in an MPEG2 encoder, and sets the recording rate of rerecorded contents in a recompressing processor. The recompressing processor receives a playback stream from the already recorded contents through a media recording unit, recompresses it and creates a rerecording stream at a lowered recording rate. It also receives the new recording stream from the MPEG2 encoder. It sends these two recording streams alternately to the media-recording unit, thereby recording the rerecording stream and new recording stream alternately.