Patent ID: 8176423

Claim:
An apparatus, embodied on a hardware platform, for playing multimedia contents, the apparatus comprising: a mode analyzer which determines whether a multimedia contents file providing the multimedia contents comprises contents menus for controlling the multimedia contents; a menu processor which detects the contents menus from the multimedia contents file and outputs the contents menus for a display if it is determined, by the mode analyzer, that the multimedia contents file comprises the contents menus; a controller which controls the multimedia contents corresponding to a contents menu selected from the contents menus; an image processor which decodes and outputs image data corresponding to the multimedia contents and a contents service corresponding to the selected contents menu under control of the controller; and a sound processor which decodes and outputs sound data corresponding to the multimedia contents under control of the controller, wherein, if it is determined, by the mode analyzer, that the multimedia contents file does not comprise the contents menus, the image data and the sound data are extracted from the multimedia contents file, and provided to the image processor and the sound processor, respectively.