Patent ID: 8270281

Claim:
An optical pickup device comprising: a laser light source; an objective lens that converges a laser beam emitted from the laser light source, upon an optical disc; a beam-dividing element that divides a signal beam reflected from the optical disc, into a plurality of beams; and a photodetector including a plurality of light-receiving surfaces each formed to receive a part of the signal beams obtained by the division; wherein: the beam-dividing element divides the reflected signal beam into at least two beams of light, one thereof including a push-pull signal region and one not including the push-pull signal region; the photodetector detects, of all the signal beams obtained by the division, a beam present in a beam-peripheral region free of the beam including the push-pull signal region; a detection signal obtained from the beam present in the beam-peripheral region is used to output a source signal for generating a DPD signal that acts as a tracking error signal; and a signal terminal that outputs a source signal for generating a lens error signal is capable of outputting a source signal for generating a DPD signal detected from the beam present in the beam-peripheral region.