A signal processing device having a video signal input, a circuit for
processing a video signal, a generating device for generating a character
signal, and a memory for storing the video signal to be processed and for
storing the character signal generated by the generating device. The
processing circuit may include a high-efficiency encoding unit for
compressing information of the video signal and encoding the video signal,
or a high-efficiency decoding unit for decoding the video signal and
expanding the decoded video signal, and the memory has a first area to be
accessed by the encoding unit or by the decoding unit and a second area
used by the generating device to generate the character signal.
