Patent ID: 6879555

Claim:
An optical disc apparatus comprising: a laser light source for emitting a laser beam for irradiating an optical disc surface via an objective lens; a light detector for detecting reflected light of the laser beam emitted from said laser light source and reflected by said optical disc surface; a focus controller for controlling a focus condition by moving said objective lens in a direction of an optical axis in accordance with a focus error signal generated by said light detector; a tracking controller for controlling a tracking condition by moving said objective lens in a horizontal direction in accordance with a tracking error signal generated by said light detector; a disc signal discriminator for discriminating a type of said optical disc on a basis of a focus error signal and a sub beam addition signal obtainable in performing a focus search by moving said objective lens in the direction of optical axis by means of said focus controller; and a disc information discriminator for discriminating the type of said optical disc in accordance with information recorded on said optical disc, wherein final discrimination of the type of said optical disc is made on a basis of the type discrimination result of said optical disc by means of said disc signal discriminator and the type discrimination result of said optical disc by means of said disc information discriminator, wherein with regard to a loaded optical disc, in the case where the type of optical disc discriminated by the disc signal discriminator and the type of optical disc discriminated by the disc information discriminator differ from each other, a priority is given to the type of optical disc discriminated by said disc information discriminator, wherein when the type of optical disc discriminated by the disc information discriminator is discriminated as the type of the optical disc inserted into the optical disc apparatus, a signal level obtained by the disc signal discriminator is adopted as a threshold value for discriminating the type of the optical disc used in said disc signal discriminator.