A system and method for recording compressed data onto a storage medium so that
it can be presented later in either lossy or lossless quality. The method receives
a plurality of primary bit streams and supplemental bit streams representing data
to be recorded onto the storage medium. Each primary bit stream is recorded onto
the storage medium as it is received. As each of the supplemental bit streams are
received, they are stored in a temporary memory location. After the primary bit
streams have been recorded onto the storage medium, the supplemental bit streams
are retrieved from the temporary memory location and recorded onto the storage
medium. The recording process is completed when all the primary bit stream data
and the supplemental bit stream data have been written onto the storage medium.
To present the data, a user is given the option of viewing the data in either lossy
quality or lossless quality. If lossy quality is selected, then the primary bit
stream is retrieved from the storage medium and decoded. If lossless quality is
selected, then the supplemental bit stream is retrieved from the storage medium
and copied in a temporary memory location. Once this step is completed, the primary
bit stream and the supplemental bit stream are decoded together.
