Patent ID: RE38802

Claim:
A method of reproducing data from an optical disk having a diameter less than 140 mm, a thickness of 1.2 mm±0.1 mm and a recording area divided into a lead-in area, a program area and a lead-out area, and wherein said data is recorded as embossed pits representing modulated, error-correction encoded user information including MPEG-compressed video data and compressed audio data in sectors in user tracks in said program area, representing modulated, error-correction encoded table of contents (TOC) information in sectors in at least one TOC track in said lead-in area with said TOC information including addresses of respective start sectors of said user tracks, and representing application table of contents (ATOC) information in sectors in at least one track in said program area related to said MPEG-compressed video and compressed audio data; the tracks having a track pitch in the range of 0.646 μm to 1.05 μm; said method comprising the steps of rotating said disk to obtain a constant linear velocity; projecting a pickup light beam through a lens for optically reading the data recorded on the rotating disk, said pickup light beam having a spatial frequency 1=λ/2NA, where the spatial frequency 1 is less than the track pitch, λ is the wavelength of the pickup light beam and NA is the numerical aperture of the lens; demodulating the data read from said disk; error correcting the demodulating data; separating the error corrected data into TOC information, ATOC information and user information; using said TOC information to access and read selected user tracks in response to access instructions from a user; and using said ATOC information to reproduce selected video and audio data from said disk.