Abstract: A television telephone apparatus automatically commences response communication in response to a call received, so as to transmit a response message to the caller. The apparatus has a memory for storing image message and voice message transmitted from the caller. The apparatus also has an image encoding unit which forms an image frame update request signal for updating the encoding mode, and a communication control unit for transmitting the request signal to the caller. The apparatus further has an image decoding unit which determines the mode in which the received image has been encoded and, when the encoding mode of the received image has been set to a predetermined intra-frame mode after the transmission of the image frame update request signal, a received image frame memory stores the received image data for display. This arrangement ensures that a received image of good image quality can be displayed. The quality of the displayed image can further be improved when the amount of .gamma.