Patent ID: 8201104

Claim:
A content player capable of playing contents, comprising: a control which acquires an instruction for playing of contents via a user's manipulation; a storage which stores data for a plurality of function icons representing respective types of content playing functions, the contents to be played by the player, and data for a plurality of content icons representing items of the contents and represented as cubes; a display output module which outputs image data for an on-screen menu related to playing of the contents to a display device and which plays the contents acquired from the storage in response to the user's instruction acquired by the control; a display controller which generates the image data for the on-screen menu with a two-dimensional array which includes a first array comprising the plurality of function icons arranged in a specific direction on a screen along a first axis and which also includes a second array comprising the plurality of content icons in a direction intersecting the first array on the screen along a second axis, wherein the display controller displays the second array to intersect the first array at a position of one of the function icons selected by the user, and if the content icons to be displayed in the second array have a hierarchical structure where a content icon in a higher layer can be expanded along the second axis to a content icon in a lower layer, represents the hierarchy visually by displaying the content icons in an expanded view in the second array each time the control acquires an instruction to display an expanded view of a layer in the hierarchy, while also rotating two cubes respectively representing the content icons of an immediate source for expansion and newly displayed in an expanded view, about the second axis common to the both cubes by different angles which are determined by a number of steps of expansion and a depth of the layer.