METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EMBEDDING AN ADDITIONAL LAYER OF ERROR CORRECTION INTO AN ERROR CORRECTING CODE

摘要

The present invention relates to a method of embedding an additional layer of error correction into an error correcting code such as a product code in a DVD or a picket code in a DVR, wherein information is encoded into code words of said code and wherein a number of code words are arranged in the columns of code block. In order to provide an additional layer of error correction that can be easily implemented without losing compatibility improving the error correction capabilities a method is proposed comprising the steps of: reducing the length of each row of said code block by adding row symbols together according to a predetermined adding rule resulting in a reduced code block, encoding the shortened rows of said reduced code block using a horizontal error correcting code to obtain horizontal parities, embedding said horizontal parities as additional layer in said error correcting code.