Patent ID: 8520478

Claim:
A readout device, comprising: a first recording medium having recorded therein data of arbitrary plural portions of an entire content file and having a period of a predetermined length in temporally continuous content, wherein a first plural portion among the plural portions is temporally spaced apart from a second plural portion among the plural portions next temporally following the first plural portion in the continuous content, and wherein content corresponding to the data of the second plural portion is not continuous with content corresponding to the data of the first plural portion in the continuous content; a second recording medium having recorded therein data of the entire content file; and readout control means for controlling, when all data of content requested to be read out, the requested content including one of the plural portions of the entire content file, is judged not stored on the first recording medium, the readout, in parallel, of data of the one portion from the first recording medium and, from the second recording medium, of data of a predetermined length of the entire content file following the data of the entire content file corresponding to the one portion, such that the data of the predetermined length read out from the second recording medium is reproducible without interruption following the reproduction of the data of the one portion read out from the first recording medium, in which the period of the predetermined length of each of the plural portions has a respective readout or reproduce time associated therewith which is longer than a time for the readout of the respective data from the second recording medium to begin after a request for readout of the respective data is made.