A method and apparatus for reproducing scalable video streams are provided. In the method and apparatus, multimedia data provided by video streaming service is searched fast using a characteristic that a video stream having temporal scalability is flexible to temporal levels. The apparatus includes a playback speed setting unit setting a playback speed when the playback speed is selected for a bitstream, a control unit determining a temporal level corresponding to the playback speed set by the playback speed setting unit and extracting frames to be decoded from the bitstream according to the determined temporal level, and a timing synchronization unit synchronizing the frames that are decoded with a frame rate of an original video signal using a timing signal.