Patent 7239795 was granted and assigned to Sony on July, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In an STC generating step, STCs (STC_d) delayed a time “System_delay” from STC (STC_medium) in compressed picture data read from a recording medium in the normal-speed reproduction mode is sequentially generated. In this STC generating step, there is set at shift from a variable-speed reproduction to normal-speed reproduction an STC initial value on the basis of results of comparison between PTS (PTS_s) in display picture data at the time of reproduction mode shift and {STC_medium at the shift−(delay due to the shift (shift_delay)+System_delay)}. Thus, when shifting the reproduction mode from a variable-speed one to normal-sped one in compliance with the MPEG standard, pictures can smoothly be displayed in the normal-speed reproduction mode without skipping over any displayed pictures.