Patent ID: 8406604

Claim:
A playback apparatus for mounting a recording medium on which an index table, operation mode objects, playlists and applications are recorded, and playing back the playlists and executing the applications, wherein the applications are programs written in a Java language, whose life cycles are managed for each title, each playlist is a unit of playback defined with playback path information and a digital stream, the playback path information defining a playback path in the digital stream, the index table shows the titles selectable on the recording medium and operation mode objects in one-to-one correspondence, each operation mode object (i) stores therein an application management table and a playlist table, and (ii) stipulates a control procedure in a second mode that is a second of two modes, a first mode being a mode in which the playback apparatus operates on a command base, and the second mode being a mode in which the playback apparatus operates on a base of an application for a virtual machine, the application management table showing an application whose life cycle is indicated by a title corresponding to the operation mode object, and the playlist table showing a playlist to be played back, the playlist table includes a playback attribute showing whether the corresponding playlist is to be automatically played back, and the playback apparatus comprises: a module manager operable to select a title from among the titles that are shown in the index table; a playback control engine operable to playback a playlist; and a virtual machine operable to execute an application, wherein the playback apparatus outputs a video to a display device based on the playlist, and when graphics is rendered by the application, overlays the graphics on the video, the virtual machine starts, when one of the titles is selected by the module manager, execution of the application whose life cycle corresponds to the selected title, and the playback control engine starts, when one of the titles is selected by the module manager, playback of the playlist shown in the playlist table of one of the operation mode objects that corresponds to the selected title, without waiting for a playback instruction from the application, according to the playback attribute.