Apparatus and method for offering digital multimedia broadcasting service in portable terminal

An apparatus and a method for offering the digital multimedia broadcasting service in a portable terminal are provided to prevent users from feeling time retardation for channel change by receiving the contents broadcasted from changed channel, displaying the letter and the image representing contents information and playing back the contents after selecting the changed channel. When a watching event of a digital multimedia broadcasting is generated(201), a received ESG(Electronic Service Guide) or EPG(Electronic Program Guide) data is analyzed(203), and the characteristic of each channel's broadcast contents are inspected(205). Each content is mapped to the stored image having the same characteristic as the inspected characteristic(207). A specified channel is selected by user from displaying the channel list(209). The images mapped to the contents of the selected channel are displayed by the time of receiving the contents of the selected channel(215). In case of receiving the contents of the selected channel, the received contents are played back(219). The displayed channel list comprises the broadcast contents information of the channel and images mapped to each images. The image mapped to each image consists of at least one of the standing image and the moving image.