Patent ID: 7403699

Claim:
An optical disc apparatus comprising: an optical pickup for reading out compressed data, including compressed video data and compressed audio data, recorded in a recorded area of an optical disc; a memory for storing a table of identification information for identifying kinds of the compressed data read out by the optical pickup; a demultiplexer for demultiplexing the compressed data, including compressed video data and compressed audio data, read out by the optical pickup into assorted kinds of data in accordance with the identification information stored in the memory; a video decoder for decoding the compressed video data demultiplexed by the demultiplexer; an audio decoder for decoding the compressed audio data demultiplexed by the demultiplexer; an output terminal for outputting the video data decoded by the video decoder and the audio data decoded by the audio decoder; and a main controller for controlling the optical pickup, the memory, the demultiplexer, the video decoder, the audio decoder and the output terminal, wherein the table of the identification information stored in the memory contains audio identification information for identifying kinds of compressed audio data, the audio decoder comprises plural kinds of audio decoders for respectively decoding plural kinds of compressed audio data read out by the optical pickup, selection out of the audio decoders is performed in a manner that the audio identification information contained in the compressed audio data which is read out by the optical pickup is compared with the audio identification information in the table of the identification information stored in the memory, thereby the kind of the compressed audio data read out by the optical pickup is discriminated, and one of the audio decoders is selected in accordance with the thus discriminated kind of compressed audio data, the audio decoder is absent of a DTS audio decoding function or DTS audio output function, the main controller performs such control that, in restarting a decoding process, compressed data of DTS audio is prevented from being sent to the audio decoder, thereby preventing the optical disc apparatus from becoming unable to output audio data from the output terminal, in stopping a preceding reproduction process, the memory stores audio identification information corresponding to the kind of audio having been reproduced in the preceding reproduction process, and in restarting the reproduction process, the demultiplexer is controlled by the main controller to extract, from the compressed audio data read out by the optical pickup, compressed audio data having the same audio identification information that the memory stores, and to send the extracted compressed audio data to the audio decoder.