Patent 7342961 was granted and assigned to Sony on March, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
With respect to change of a bit rate at the time of transmitting encoded data TS, a system delay is fixed and the output size of data frame_bit [j] every predetermined data unit is successively calculated, thereby making it possible to continuously obtain data from the buffer 103 of a decoding side without breaks irrespective of change of the bit rate.