Patent ID: 7263044

Claim:
A reproducing apparatus comprising: a pickup to irradiate a beam onto an information storage medium to reproduce data from the information storage medium, the information storage medium including a first recording layer and a second recording layer, the first recording layer being disposed closer to the pickup than the second recording layer; and a controller to control the pickup to reproduce data from a user data area of each of the first recording layer and the second recording layer; wherein: a size of a recordable region in the user data area of the second recording layer is smaller than a size of a recordable region in the user data area of the first recording layer, the first recording layer includes a first area that is not part of the user data area of the first recording layer located on an inner circumference of the user data area of the first recording layer, and a second area that is not part of the user data area of the first recording layer located on an outer circumference of the user data area of the first recording layer, the second recording layer includes a third area that is not part of the user data area of the second recording layer located on an inner circumference of the user data area of the second recording layer, and a fourth area that is not part of the user data area of the second recording layer located on an outer circumference of the user data area of the second recording layer, the first area of the first recording layer is smaller than the third area of the second recording layer, and/or the second area of the first recording layer is smaller than the fourth area of the second recording layer, each of the first recording layer and the second recording layer includes an optimum power control (OPC) area for performing a test to determine an optimum recording power, and a recordable region in the OPC area of the first recording layer is larger than a recordable region in the OPC area of the second recording layer.