The disclosed embodiments relate to identifying physical characteristic information of an optical disc, and more particularly, to a method and related controller for identifying physical characteristic information of an optical disc, such as a disc type, layer number and/or disc capacity of a Blu-ray disc (BD), by referring to a reading result derived from reading specific region(s) on the optical disc, where each specific region is specified in the BD specification for recording information associated with recording management of a BD recordable disc.
Optical storage media, such as recordable optical discs, have become popular data carriers nowadays. When an optical disc is loaded into an optical disc drive, the optical disc drive has to acquire physical characteristic information of the optical disc for reading data from or recording data onto the optical disc. Taking a Blu-ray disc (BD) for example, the physical characteristic information is generally derived from a permanent information & control data (PIC) zone or ADIP (Address In Pre-Groove) Aux frames on the BD disc. However, when the BD disc has defective areas due to scratch, dirt, or fingerprint on a surface of the BD disc, the optical disc drive might have difficulty in reading the physical characteristic information from the PIC zone or ADIP Aux frame which is fully or partially affected thereby. Besides, even though the optical disc drive may successfully read the physical characteristic information from the PIC zone or ADIP Aux frame, the overall reading procedure is time-consuming.
In view of above, avoiding deriving the physical characteristic information from the PIC zone or ADIP Aux frame is beneficial to the performance of the optical disc drive. Therefore, there is a need for obtaining the desired physical characteristic information of the optical disc without reading the PIC zone or ADIP Aux frame.