Patent ID: 7577062

Claim:
An apparatus for reproducing at least one set of playback data and bibliographic information associated with the playback data from a recording medium, each of the bibliographic information contiguously recorded at an end of the corresponding playback data and different from information for reproducing the corresponding playback data, by controlling a spindle motor for rotating the recording medium, a pickup for reading out the playback data and the bibliographic information from the recording medium, and a traverse motor for moving the pickup, the apparatus comprising: a playback control part for storing a table including a relation between: (a) each identification information for identifying each set of the playback data and the bibliographic data, and (b) recording location on the recording medium of each set; a playback ID storing part for storing the identification information of the playback data which is presently reproduced; an auxiliary information storage part which stores, during playback operation, the bibliographic information associated with the presently reproduced playback data; a comparator for reading out next identification information of next playback data which is to be next reproduced from the playback control part, comparing the identification information stored in the playback ID storing part with the next identification information, and outputting a resulting comparison result whether or not the next identification information is present in the playback ID storing part; and a controller for controlling the spindle motor, the pickup and the traverse motor, wherein, in response to the comparison result that the next identification information is not present in the playback ID storing part, the controller controls the traverse motor to pass the next playback data and move to the end of the next playback data, and controls the pickup to reproduce the bibliographic information contiguously recorded at the end of the next playback data and associated with the next playback data from the recording medium, and wherein, in response to the comparison result that the next identification information is present in the playback ID storing part, the controller reads out the bibliographic information from the auxiliary information storage part, as next bibliographic information of the next playback data which is to be next reproduced, without any control to the traverse motor.