Patent ID: 7130252

Claim:
A method for reproducing data from a recording medium having recorded thereon first data and second data and having recorded thereon content data representing contents of the first data, the first data being recorded in a form of a track consisting of a plurality of pits, the second data being recorded by displacing the pits from the track along a direction normal to the track, and the content data including identification data that indicates whether the second data is recorded on the recording medium and including reproduction-mode identification data representing a reproduction mode for reproducing the first data and the second data, said method comprising: reading the identification data and the reproduction-mode identification data from the recording medium; determining a type of the recording medium from the read reproduction-mode identification data when the read identification data indicates that the second data is recorded on the recording medium; selecting, based on the determined type, reproduction of the first data and the second data read from the recording medium as two independent audio information items, multi-channel audio information items, an audio information item with text data or an audio information item with image data; and reproducing the first data and the second data read from the recording medium based on said selecting step.