Patent ID: 6931556

Claim:
A method of operating an optical disk player comprising: receiving an instruction to read audio, video or audio/video data from an optical disk within the optical disk player, wherein the data is to be provided to an output means at a known playback rate; reading the data from the optical disk at a rate that is greater than the known playback rate; recording in an index database information parameters selected from a title of the optical disk, a title of a track of the data written to the bard disk, or combinations thereof; comparing the information parameters of the data with information parameters of data previously recorded in the index; determining whether the optical disk or the track has previously been written to the hard disk; playing the data from the hard disk without re-reading the optical disk if the data has been previously written to the hard disk and turning oil the optical disk player; storing the data on a hard disk as the data is being read if the data was not previously stored on the hard disk; providing the data to the output means at the known playback rate while the data is being stored; turning off the optical disk player as soon as the data has been read and stored; and then continuing to provide the data to the output means at the known playback rate by retrieving the data stored on the hard disk.