Patent ID: 8107789

Claim:
A playback apparatus for playing back an AV stream data using an external recording medium that stores a plurality of contents, each including the AV stream data and an application program that refers to the AV stream data to play back the AV stream data in a predetermined playback order, the playback apparatus comprising: an internal recording medium; a mode manager that selects one of the plurality of contents; an application executor that executes an application program corresponding to the selected content; a playback controller that plays back the AV stream data included in the content corresponding to the executed application program; a network manager that obtains, from an external server including therein one or more alternative contents, (i) an alternative content to replace part of the contents and (ii) correspondence information showing a correspondence between a storage location where the internal recording medium of the alternative content is stored and a storage location where the external recording medium of the part of the contents to be replaced is stored, and stores the obtained alternative content and correspondence information in the internal recording medium; and a virtual package manager that includes: a first judger that judges, based on the correspondence information, whether or not the alternative content exists on the internal recording medium; and a second judger that detects whether there is an error in the alternative content, stores a detection result showing a result of the detection as additional information in the internal recording medium, and judges whether or not an error is detected in the alternative content in accordance with the detection result stored as the additional information, and at a time when the application program being executed reads the AV stream data included in a content being referred to, when the judgment by the first judger and the judgment by the second judger are affirmative, reads the alternative content stored in the storage location on the internal recording medium corresponding to the storage location of the part of the contents shown by the correspondence information, in place of reading the part of the contents stored in the storage location on the external recording medium, when the one of the judger by the first judger and the judgment by the second judger is negative, reads the part of the contents stored in the storage location on the external recording medium, wherein the playback controller includes: a playback error detector that detects a playback error during playback of the read alternative content stored in the storage location on the internal recording medium, and when the playback error is detected during playback of the read alternative content stored in the storage location on the internal recording medium, rewrites a result of the detection so that the additional information indicates that the playback error is detected, and terminates the application program being executed.