To provide a digital broadcast receiver that reduces a time caused at channel switching during which an image signal cannot be restored so as to smoothly switch channels.

This digital broadcast receiver uses a group of picture header detection circuit 20, a period detection circuit 21, a reference signal generating circuit 22, and a phase detection circuit 23 to obtain phase information 203 to detect a group of picture header from a compressed signal 103 for each program and a memory 30 stores the values of them. In the case of switching channels, the phase information stored in the memory 30 as to a succeeding program is fed to a program number delay circuit 24. The program number delay circuit 24 delays a set program number 113 according to the received phase information 205 and gives the delayed number to a program extract separation circuit 12. Thus, an AV decoder 13 starts decoding the compressed signal 103 at a point of time when the group of picture header is detected in the compressed signal 103 of the next program.