Digital vtr

A playback device for replaying a bit stream comprised of a plurality of transport stream packets and recorded on a medium, the playback device comprising:

• a data decoding circuit for decoding at least intra-picture data from the bit stream which has been read from the medium;
• a bit stream forming circuit for forming a bit stream used for fast replay using the intra-picture data decoded by the data decoding circuit;
• and
• a buffer for storing the bit stream formed by the bit stream forming circuit to output the bit stream at a predetermined rate;
• wherein the bit stream recorded on the medium is formatted into a plurality of data units, each of which comprises a predetermined number N of data segments formed by a predetermined number M of said plurality of transport stream packets, wherein M≠N and the ratio of M to N is constant.