The present invention generally relates to information recording disc players, and more particularly to an information recording disc player for selectively playing one of a plurality of information recording discs loaded into the information recording disc player together with disc cartridges.
Conventionally, there is an information recording disc player (hereinafter simply referred to as a disc player) which is loaded with a disc cartridge accommodating a plurality of compact discs and selectively plays one of the compact discs in the cartridge at one time. According to this disc player, when a predetermined number of discs to be played in sequence are accommodated within the cartridge which is loaded into the disc player, there is no need to unload a disc from the disc player and then load another disc into the disc player every time the playing of one disc is completed because one of the discs in the cartridge may be selectively played in an arbitrary sequence. Hence, this disc player is especially useful when a user wishes to play a plurality of discs in sequence.
But there is a case where the user wishes to play a certain disc which is not accommodated within the cartridge which is already loaded in the disc player. In this case, the user must unload the cartridge from the disc player, extract one disc from the cartridge, insert the certain disc in place of the extracted disc, and then load the cartridge into the disc player so that the disc player may selectively play the certain disc. As a result, there is a problem in that the user must carry out an extremely troublesome operation when the certain disc which is to be played is not accommodated within the cartridge which is already loaded in the disc player.
Generally, the user accommodates within the cartridge discs which are of the same category such as classical music, for conveniencesake. Furthermore, the discs accommodated within the cartridge have something in common such as the performing artist. For these reason, when the certain disc is inserted into the cartridge in place of the extracted disc, it is desirable in most cases to replace the certain disc by the extracted disc after the certain disc is played. However, there is a problem in that the user must carry out a troublesome operation of unloading the cartridge from the disc player, extracting the certain disc from the cartridge, and then inserting the extracted disc to its original position within the cartridge in place of the extracted certain disc.
It is possible to prepare another cartridge which accommodates the certain disc in addition to the cartridge accommodating the plurality of discs. However, since the disc player is provided with only one cartridge receiving part, the originally loaded cartridge must be unloaded from the disc player before this other cartridge may be loaded into the disc player. As a result, although the operation is a little simpler compared to the case described above, the user must still carry out the troublesome operation of unloading the originally loaded cartridge from the disc player and then loading the other cartridge accommodating the certain disc into the disc player. In addition, when the user wishes to play one of the discs in the originally loaded cartridge after the playing of the certain disc is completed, the other cartridge must be unloaded from the disc player before the originally loaded cartridge can again be loaded into the disc player. Therefore, the preparation of the other cartridge accommodating the certain disc does not solve the problem of troublesome operations which must be carried out by the user when the user wishes to play the certain disc which is not accommodated within the originally loaded cartridge.