Samsung as well as Panasonic it turns out. What started this whole thing off was a tray gear in my first generation Samsung blu ray player broke. Before the tray gear broke this blu ray player had no problem playing my DVDA blu ray discs. Best Buy replaced my broken Samsung blu ray player with another Samsung blu ray player. As mentioned in my original post it had problems with my DVDA disc that the broken player didn't. I took the replacement player back to Best Buy and they replaced it with an even more expensive Samsung blu ray player that also had a problem with the DVDA disc. I took that one back and they replaced it with a Panasonic that also had a problem with the DVDA disc. I took that one back and they were going to replace it with an even more expensive Panasonic blu ray player when I suggested they replace it with a Sony blu ray player because the disc that the other players had problems with was created with Sony software. 5 blu ray players later the Sony blu ray player worked as well as the original Samsung that broke a tray gear. GO FIGURE?

A very large component of how Blu-ray players are designed is their firmware set - sometimes within a product line this is upgradeable. The actual problem is that the firmware documentation is not available - so given a special set of authoring tools like DVDAPro you will never know exactly which combination of disc and player will produce a set of player behaviors with your single burned disc.

Think of it this way, the Blu-ray player -given a simple set of mechanical operating parts is for most part a very sophisticated computer tool , for which you have no clue how it was designed to function.

Funny you should mention that because I had an issue with that very thing. One of the Samsung players Best Buy swapped out for me worked in the store. However, when I got the boxed unit home it didn't. When I hooked the unit up to the internet the first thing it wanted to do was update the firmware. I allowed it to do so. After that it did not work like the unit in the store. I went back to the store to confirm that the one on display worked. It did, but the exact same model I had didn't. Yep, the only difference was their firware revision. I contacted Samsung thinking that they would just email me the older firmware revision, but they refused to give me the old firware revision saying the way the update processs worked it was impossible to go backwards in revision. I disagree with the notion that "you never know". The DVDA burn be it Blu ray, or DVD meets a given ISO standard just like any Hollywood disc does. You should not have to seek out a certain player that works with your specific disc just because it was burned with a certian NLE. That's the whole reason for standards to begin with.

Anyway . . ... everything is fine now, but I had to go through 4 different players to find one that works with a DVDA blu ray burn. It just so happens that player is a Sony.

Two things about burned discs are very very different from Hollywood releases of copyrighted products.

1) The disc you create is burned and the Hollywood title is pressed.
For one thing, the mere reflectance physical property factor of the two disc surfaces can make a disc work in a player very differently.

2) The disc you create with authoring software like DVDAPro or any other consumer brand is NOT how Hollywood authors discs.
The closest you can come to that level is with a Sony Product from DoStudio that starts at a price for the software of $3,000 and can go upwards of $7000 if you care to have the full set of options.

Granted, but I'm referring to the data that is burned onto the disc. The directory structure, file formats, file limitations, etc. All that is SUPPOSED to be standardized. As such Blu ray (DVD too) discs SHOULD play the same from player to player. However, I can tell you one DVDA encoded and burned Blu ray disc was played differently between 3 different manufacturer's Blu ray players encompassing 5 different models. Keep in mind with some effort all the players played the disc, but only the Sony played the disc as designed with scene selection pages and chapters with background audio. If I was ok with only seeing the original video and heaing the original audio from start to finish I would have stayed with the first replacement player, but I wanted to see the scene selection pages and background audio as I programmed them. After all the disc worked as designed on my desktop PC and laptop AND several players in the store. I guess this is why it's called BLEEDING EDGE!

Just try to grasp what is going on here. The performance behaviors for a played disc in a set-top player is the RESULT of a firmware implementation + (that is interaction with) encoded subset of instructions written by the authoring package. NOTE this is a computation factor - not something written in stone.

If I use a computation system that is meant to create averages and round-off numbers - my output is going to be very different from a system that uses REAL numbers throughout the calcs.

I'm not sure if we're saying the same thing only different, or do we disagree entirely. A standard IS something that's written in stone. That's how a given standard can be applied across many platforms. The standard RS232 is the same MAC, Linux, UNIX, Windows, DOS etc. When something is digital it's either on, or off. It's not like you can be close a la a "computation factor". On is on and off is off there is no derivitive of either.The output of DVDA has to be to an exact standard and the player also has to be designed to accept that exact standard. Otherwise having either work would be pure happenstance.