Patent ID: 7860370

Claim:
A reproduction apparatus, comprising: a reproducing means for reading information stored in a recording medium and reproducing the information; a skip-operation accepting means for arbitrarily accepting one of an instruction for a forward reproduction-position skip and an instruction for a backward reproduction-position skip; a skip-time determining means for making a skip time for one of the forward reproduction-position skip and the backward reproduction-position skip longer than the skip time for another of the forward reproduction-position skip and the backward reproduction-position skip, and determining the skip time for one of the forward reproduction-position skip and the backward reproduction-position skip based on the one of the instruction for the forward reproduction-position skip and the instruction for the backward reproduction-position skip accepted by the skip-operation accepting means; a controlling means for, when the skip-operation accepting means accepts one of the instruction for the forward reproduction-position skip and the instruction for the backward reproduction-position skip during a reproduction by the reproducing means, stopping the reproduction by the reproducing means, moving a reading position, from which the reproducing means reads the information from the recording medium, by the skip time determined, for the one of the forward reproduction-position skip and the backward reproduction-position skip, by the skip-time determining means, and resuming the reproduction after the moving of the reading position is completed; a forward skip-operation elapse-time clocking means for clocking an elapsed time that has elapsed since a last instruction has been accepted for the forward reproduction-position skip; and a backward-skip deciding means for deciding whether or not the elapsed time clocked by the forward skip-operation elapse-time clocking means has exceeded a predetermined time, when the skip-operation accepting means accepts the instruction for the backward reproduction-position skip, wherein, when the backward-skip deciding means decides that the elapsed time exceeds the predetermined time, the skip-time determining means determines a predetermined first skip time, and wherein, when the backward-skip deciding means decides that the elapsed time does not exceed the predetermined time, the skip-time determining means determines a second skip time that is shorter than the first skip time.