Patent ID: 7170838

Claim:
An information recording and reproducing apparatus capable of recording information to, reproducing from an information recording medium or erasing information on the information recording medium, by irradiating the information recording medium with an oscillating laser beam and forming on a data area of the information recording medium, a recording region physically different to a portion to which information has not been recorded, the apparatus comprising: means for detecting amplitude information of a reproduced signal, the reproduced signal being based at least in part on recorded user information generated from a write operation, and means for detecting performance information or information on error information obtained from a binarized signal of the reproduced signal, wherein the apparatus: performs the write operation to record user information on the information recording medium after performing an initial write condition learning operation, wherein the recorded user information is played back during a playback operation; performs a reproducing operation of the recorded user information to generate the reproduced signal; operates to judge a quality of the reproduced signal using the amplitude information of the reproduced signal and the performance information or error information obtained from the binarized signal of the reproduced signal; and makes changes to recording conditions or reproduction conditions immediately after performing the reproducing operation based on the quality of the reproduced signal, wherein the changes to recording conditions include changing recording power based on the amplitude information of the reproduced signal and/or changing a recording pulse width based on the error information or performance information obtained from the binarized signal of the reproduced signal.