Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Media Electronics Co., Ltd.

Hideo Suenaga

Toshio Sugiyama

Katsuhiko Kimura

Tomoto Kawamura

Masayuki Kobayashi

Yukio Fukui

Seiichi Katou

Kazuyuki Fukuda

Ryoji Okada

Harushige Nakagaki

Kazuhiro Oda

Teruhisa Akashi

Tokinori Furuichi

Ryuichi Koike

Kotaro Oishi

Hiromitsu Imamiya

An optical disc device includes an optical source for emitting an optical beam, an incident intensity control circuit for controlling an intensity of the optical beam emitted from the optical source, an objective lens for focusing the optical beam on an optical disc, an optical detector for receiving the optical beam reflected from the optical disc, and a servo signal generation circuit for generating a focus error signal from the optical detector, by this configuration, the optical beam is varied once to a third optical beam intensity to be present in between a first optical beam intensity and a second optical beam intensity when varying from the first optical beam intensity up to the second optical beam intensity different from the first optical beam intensity, and the incident intensity control circuit is controlled such that the variation of focus error signal is not exceeded over a predetermined range.

Optical disc device

An optical device wherein an optical component and a plurality of light emitting elements are mounted on an identical substrate, a level of a surface on which the optical component is mounted is different from that of a surface on which the light emitting elements are mounted by a step provided on the substrate, at least one plane vertical to the surface on which the optical component is mounted and located on a periphery of the substrate is opened, a reflecting surface, a transmitting surface or a diffraction grating surface of the optical component is provided along sides generated by the step provided in the substrate, optical axes of the plurality of light emitting elements of which polarization axes are in parallel with each other intersect with each other on the surface, and an exit light beam of the light emitting elements is emitted from the opened plane.

Optical device, optical pickup and optical disk apparatus

An method to prevent excessive heat generation of the pickup actuator from occurring when a disk has a large eccentricity or planar vibration in a high-speed disk reproducing apparatus using an optical pickup. The disk reproducing apparatus has a status determining arrangement for monitoring a present actuator drive state, an analyzing arrangement for analyzing an output signal of the status determining arrangement, and disk rotational speed switching control arrangement for selecting disk reproducing speeds according to a control signal of the identification means, thereby lowering the reproducing speed when the eccentricity or planar vibration is large. Such invention prevents heat generation of the pickup actuator from occurring because high-speed reproduction can be performed when the eccentricity or planar vibration is small, and reproduction speed can be automatically reduced when the eccentricity or planar vibration is large.

Disk reproducing speed control method and a disk reproducing apparatus

An optical reading/reproducing apparatus such as a compact disc (CD) player, and particularly a focusing system therefor, wherein the direction of one of the focal lines of the light spot on a light detector is set to be in parallel with the direction of track on the disc surface, a divide-into-four line of the light detector is set to be 45 degrees or a value close thereto with respect to the track direction, and an offset voltage is applied to a portion of the focus servo loop connected with the output unit of a focus error detector circuit. Owing to this structure, the optical parts can be easily mounted, a casing for containing them can be easily molded, and the apparatus can be mass-produced in small sizes.

Optical reading/reproducing apparatus

An optical disc apparatus arranged so that a light beam from a laser light source is focused by an object lens and irradiated on an optical recording medium having thereon a mirror surface and tracks of a plurality of pits for recording data, and that a reflected beam from the recording medium is irradiated on an optical detector from which a signal on the recording medium is reproduced for maintaining a position of said object lens at an optical center axis by a tracking servo. The optical detector includes at least two adjacent photoelectric transducers providing outputs indicative of the reflected beam incident thereon, a device for producing a signal indicative of a difference between the outputs from the transducers, and a position detector for detecting the position of the object lens in a direction perpendicular to the tracks in cooperation with said difference producing device. The position detector includes a sampling arrangement for sampling the difference signal when the light beam is irradiated only on a non-pit portion of said mirror surface. Further, the optical detector includes a feedback loop for positioning the object lens at the optical center axis when the tracking servo is not properly operated at the time of accessing or by external disturbance.

Optical disc apparatus with access system having object lens control

A method and apparatus is disclosed for reducing optical noise in an optical information processing system having a single longitudinal mode laser which is converged on a record medium for detecting information stored on the medium. A range from 1-10% of the total emitted light per facet of the laser is fed back to an emitting point of the laser to minimize the occurrence of optical noise present in the light emitted from the laser.

Method and apparatus for reducing semiconductor laser optical noise

A tracking system for optically tracking information tracks formed on a recording medium, comprising a comparator which generates a trigger signal when the light beam scanning the information track is located over an information pit, and a sample holding circuit which samples a deviation signal caused by the difference of reflection light intensities on two photo detectors at that time. The deviation signal obtained when the light beam is located over the information pit includes smaller error component caused by the displacement of the object lens during the tracking control, whereby the accurate tracking control can be achieved.

Growing community of inventors

Toyokawa, Japan

Hideo Suenaga