Elements necessary for a digital television receiver are structured as a
plurality of digital signal processing blocks and a host arithmetic operation processing
block. The blocks are connected through a general purpose bus. Commands for controlling
operations of the blocks and data of a stream are transferred through the bus.
When an encryption encoder/decode is disposed in each block, contents transferred
through the bus can be protected. When an encryption encoder/decode circuit is
disposed in an interface to which an extension plug-in card is attached, contents
that are output from the interface can be protected.