An optical disc including at least three layers of recording layers that each record information in an information track. The recording layer includes: an inner circumferential side region positioned on the inner circumferential side; a data region which is positioned to the outer circumferential side of the inner circumferential side region and records content information; and an outer circumferential side region positioned to the outer circumferential side of the data region. The content information is recorded in the data region of the three or more layers, and a point on an upper layer and a point on a lower layer one layer below the upper layer at which playback switches from content information of the upper layer being played back in an inner circumferential direction to content information of the lower layer, are set to be more to the outside than an innermost circumferential position of the data region.

An information recording medium (10) including a first region (11) in which medium identification information has been recorded, a data region (13), and a second region (12) which is positioned between the first region (11) and the data region (13) and in which control information has been recorded, in which an area of the first region (11) is greater than an area of the second region (12) in size.

An information recording medium (10) including a first region (11) in which medium identification information has been recorded, a data region (13), and a second region (12) which is positioned between the first region (11) and the data region (13) and in which control information has been recorded, in which an area of the first region (11) is greater than an area of the second region (12) in size.

Method and apparatus for storing archive images to a substrate, such as a rotatable optical disc. In some embodiments, an optical medium has a substrate which stores a plurality of archived images in a human detectable form on a surface of the substrate and control data associated with the archived images to facilitate optical recovery of said human detectable images from the surface. The archived images are arranged as a sequence of tiles on a recording layer of the optical medium each tile having an associated length and width. The control data are arranged as machine readable information that identifies an overall content of the plurality of archived images.

The present invention is for more optimally performing recording and reproduction of stereoscopic video. In the present invention, parallax information is utilized to store, in a recording medium, stereoscopic video including left-eye images and right-eye images. Particularly, for video content that contains stereoscopic images, information is obtained regarding the amount of variation in parallactic angle having a given or larger value, a variation time that the variation in parallactic angle takes, and the number of times that the variation in parallactic angle occurs. An evaluation value is calculated that corresponds to the degree of eye fatigue on the basis of the amount of variation, the variation time, and the number of times of the variation. According to the present invention, the video content is encoded in such a manner that the evaluation value is within a given range, and then recorded in the recording medium.

In a multilayer optical disc having information layers conforming to a plurality of different optical disc standards, because the type of each information layer is not recorded in the other information layers, in read and write operations by a compatible optical disc device conforming to a plurality of optical disc standards, every time the information layer being accessed changes, it has been necessary to read the type of the information layer and select a method of generating a tracking error signal adapted to the type of information layer, so access has taken time. In order to solve the above problem, in the optical multilayer disc according to the present invention, having information layers conforming to a plurality of different optical disc standards, in an area in one of the information layers, information about the other information layers is recorded. The time required to access the other information layers can be reduced by using this information to select a tracking error signal generating method.

An optical disk (100) of the present invention includes (i) a medium information region (101) (a) in which type identification information is recorded by recesses and/or protrusions which are formed by a given modulation method and whose lengths are longer than a length of an optical system resolution limit of a playback device and (b) in which first address information is recorded in a first address data format and (ii) a data region (102) (a) in which content data is recorded by recesses and/or protrusions which are formed by the given modulation method and which include a recess and/or a protrusion whose length is shorter than the length of the optical system resolution limit and (b) in which second address information is recorded in a second address data format.

An information recording medium (10) including a first region (11) in which medium identification information has been recorded, a data region (13), and a second region (12) which is positioned between the first region (11) and the data region (13) and in which control information has been recorded, in which an area of the first region (11) is greater than an area of the second region (12) in size.

The present invention is for more optimally performing recording and reproduction of stereoscopic video. In the present invention, parallax information is utilized to store, in a recording medium, stereoscopic video including left-eye images and right-eye images. Particularly, for video content that contains stereoscopic images, information is obtained regarding the amount of variation in parallactic angle having a given or larger value, a variation time that the variation in parallactic angle takes, and the number of times that the variation in parallactic angle occurs. An evaluation value is calculated that corresponds to the degree of eye fatigue on the basis of the amount of variation, the variation time, and the number of times of the variation. According to the present invention, the video content is encoded in such a manner that the evaluation value is within a given range, and then recorded in the recording medium.

A monocular holographic storage device or system to provide for compact recording and/or reading of data pages in a holographic storage medium. Also provided are methods for carrying out such data storage and/or data recovery using a monocular holographic storage device or system. Further provided are articles including holographic storage media for recording or for reading recorded data using such devices or systems.