Sony Corporation

Nobuyuki Aoki

Kiyoshi Ota

Daisuke Hiranaka

Hajime Nitta

Takeshi Suzuki

Yoshinori Shimizu

Takashi Tajiri

Shigeho Ogawa

Hiromasa Watanabe

Shinji Nagasaka

Provided are: a turn table for storing a disk shaped recording medium Dn to be vertically placed; a disk drive unit disposed at the center part of the table, the disk drive unit mounting a recording medium Dn to record and/or reproduce an information signal SIN; disk carrying means for carrying the recording medium Dn between the disk drive unit and the turn table; and a control device, wherein the control device controls the turn table and disk carrying medium so as to detect whether or not the recording medium Dn is stored in the disk storage unit, judge an information recording face of the recording medium Dn removed from the disk storage unit, and based on the judgment result, mount the recording medium Dn intact on the disk drive unit or invert the recording medium Dn, thereby remounting the medium on the disk drive. In this manner, even in the case a recording medium is mounted to be oriented in opposite, a user can automatically mount the recording medium with its information recording face toward a disk drive unit without removing the recording medium from the unit.

Disk recording and/or reproducing apparatus and control method thereof

Reproduction apparatus and method

Method and apparatus for reproducing data from a recording medium accounting for differences in track sizes

A data reproducing method and apparatus for providing special reproductions such as a reverse reproduction quickly when it is specified. In the data reproducing apparatus comprising a demodulator for demodulating data read out of a digital video disk by a pickup, a buffer for temporarily storing the demodulated data and a decoder for decoding the data read out of the buffer into original video signals, further included is a control circuit for controlling the buffer so that an unread data area and an already-read data area in the buffer take about half of the total memory capacity, respectively. As a result, the data necessary for reverse reproduction or the like is present in the buffer, allowing the special reproduction to run quickly.

Reproduction of information using a ring buffer with read and write

A playback apparatus prevents the position of a pick-up from deviating to a location outside a data area of a record medium. A system controller judges whether the number of tracks T to be skipped between the current read position and a target sector of a track jump is equal to or greater than a predetermined number. If the number of tracks is equal to or greater than 1,000, for example, the system controller then judges whether a track including the target sector is located within a predetermined range A from the edge of a data area on the medium which corresponds to an error that may result in the track jump. If the track including the target sector is located within the predetermined range from the edge of the data area, the system controller subtracts A from the number of tracks T to be skipped in the track jump resulting in a new number of tracks T-A. The track jump is executed by skipping (T-A) tracks while the tracking and thread servos are halted.

Method and apparatus for reading out data from a recording medium

When reproducing a disk having a plurality of recording layers read from one face, the reading out position is refocused from the current track position in a current recording layer to the target track position in the target recording layer. The reading out position deviates appreciably during such refocusing of the reading out position, and spurt processing is performed as a result. To avoid lengthy spurt processing, the reading out position is first moved from a first recording layer to a second recording layer in which is recorded the data to be read next. Thereafter, the reading out position is moved along the second recording layer to a position where such data is located, thereby avoiding additional spurt processing.

Apparatus and method for accessing multiple recording layers of a disk

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Kanagawa, Japan

Nobuyuki Aoki