I'm not sure what the note in your user's manual means -- but it's not likely related to your problem.

Virtually all disc compatibility issues are based on one of three things:
1. The brand of the disc. (Memorex, for instance, are awful -- Verbatims are usually very good.)
2. The speed you recorded them at. The faster you burn your disc, the less likely players will be able to play it.
3. The brand of disc player. Sonys and Pioneers are notoriously bad with home-burned discs. Before you blame anything else, check you discs on a friend's BluRay player.

The least likely cause is the software that created the DVD or BluRay files.

Hi Steve - thanks for the reply.

I'm using Panny discs burned at x2 (Max could have been x4).

I attempted to play my two BD-R discs that wouldn't play on the Sony on a Phillips, Panasonic and LG player.

Results:

Sony and Phillips played neither
Panny played one of them
LG played both.

The verbatim LTH Type BD-R was not recognised by my BD Drive so I'm going to try another burn with another type of disc.

I'd still be interested to see whether there's anybody playing the BD-R's burned with DVDAS on a Sony player given your point number 3

First - the name on the box of blank media is meaningless. Most media is produced by a relatively small number of factories, located in several different places. These factories are mostly present in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, China and India. There are more, but those are the largest ones. The best media generally comes from Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. The worst typically comes from China and Malaysia.

The blank disc brand name on the package means almost nothing. Apple is a great brand, but they do not make their own discs, instead outsourcing to a company like Mitsubishi Chemicals. Common companies like Memorex, Maxell and Imation all outsource to media vendors. Mitsubishi also makes the discs for Verbatim, etc.

It is the media ID that is important, as it reveals the disc manufacturer. Unfortunately, this is not written on packaging or anywhere else. Companies want consumers to be oblivious to this sort of behind-the-scenes information. The Media ID is also used by your DVD burner to determine the burn parameters which includes the maximum burn speed. Never, ever burn your DVD's at the maximum burn rate. (You will make a lot of coasters if you do).

I recommend that you use the freeware "DVD Identifier" to read the media ID to learn who *really* made the discs in your box. It works for Blu-Ray disks also:
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cd_dvd/dvd_tools/dvd_identifier.cfm

Your problem, however, is a mirror image of ten years ago as DVD was being adopted. For example, media, firmware and hardware were in a maelstrom of conflicting specifications as the players were designed before the spec for -R media was finalized. There are at least three BD specifications that will play Hollywood BD disks, but not recordable disks. Which one was your BD player designed to? The one who sold you the player is the least likely to know. As in the early adoption of DVD, the older the player, the less likely that it will play recordable disks..

Hi Steve

Thank you very much for this insightful post. It helps me understand a lot more about what's going on here. - Sony support was unable to tell me anything.

I've never heard of the media ID before now. I think it may explain why DVDAS only offered me the chance to burn at 2x speed when the label said it was a 4x disc.

I do remember the DVD issues you refer to.

My Sony 760 (I think its a 2009 model) has been replaced by the 770 quite recently but it did play a BD-RE disc I burned form DVDAS so that's why I've kept hopeful of a solution for the BD-R.

If I use the DVD identifier on the BD-RE I could then determine the information that I should be looking for on the BD-R? They were both Panny discs but given your first point they may have been made by different factories.

I think it may explain why DVDAS only offered me the chance to burn at 2x speed when the label said it was a 4x disc
This is because the DVD burner does not recognize the media ID and can't look up the proper burn parameters, thus it falls back to a "safe" mode. The solution is to update the DVD burner firmware.

If I use the DVD identifier on the BD-RE I could then determine the information that I should be looking for on the BD-R?
What you may likely find is a pattern, but instead of the label on the box, you'll *know* where the disc was manufactured.

I think it may explain why DVDAS only offered me the chance to burn at 2x speed when the label said it was a 4x disc
This is because the DVD burner does not recognize the media ID and can't look up the proper burn parameters, thus it falls back to a "safe" mode. The solution is to update the DVD burner firmware.

If I use the DVD identifier on the BD-RE I could then determine the information that I should be looking for on the BD-R?
What you may likely find is a pattern, but instead of the label on the box, you'll *know* where the disc was manufactured.

Better still use a "real" burning software like ImgBurn, which among other things tells you the media type (and speeds available) in its logs e.g. here's a tiny snippet from one of my logs:
...
I 16:00:07 Destination Device: [4:0:0] HL-DT-ST BD-RE GGW-H20L YL05 (G:) (ATA)
I 16:00:07 Destination Media Type: BD-R (Disc ID: RITEK-BR2-00) (Speeds: 2x, 4x)
I 16:00:07 Destination Media Sectors: 12,219,392
I 16:00:07 Write Mode: BD
I 16:00:07 Write Type: DAO
I 16:00:08 Write Speed: 4x
...
I believe ImgBurn will throw an error (or at least make an entry in its log) if you've asked for a writing speed which is not within the capabilities of your particular burner and disc.

Wovian you have said you don't want to download/install more software, but you are "flying blind" at present--get/use ImgBurn. There is another nice, free utility called MediaCodeSpeedEdit, which, (if your burner is supported by it) will allow you to open the firmware version you have loaded into your burner, and tell you all the media types and speeds that the burner's firmware knows how to handle.

So, I purchased a Sony BD-R (because this is brand of disc is recomended by the burner manual) and went to burn the project again. This was a version 1.1 which is compatible.

I set DVDAS to render the whole project and then burn it. After an hour the progress chart was showing that the project was burning but only 1% had been completed.

I only saw this after I had come out of the screen saver and then almost immediately I went from needing another 12 hours and counting to "Finished".

However the BD-R did not have anything on it and I had made another coaster because it was a BD-R!

I think I've gone backwards as earlier I had another Panny BD player play my BD that my Sony could not.

Oh dear!

My first HD project was my grand daughter's wedding last June. I used VMS10HDP Suite and burned Ridata BD-R media with DVDA Studio 5.0. My BD-R disks play just fine on a Sony BDP-BX2 and two LG players including a BD200 and a newer BD530.

LTH is a newer, lower cost BD disk process that requires a burner update. Burners made in the last six months or so should support them. See item 4 on the following link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_recordable

Good to hear Ken - thanks

My burner is a new Lite-On 12 x

LTH also needs the player to specifically support it. It may need a firmware update, which the vendor may or may not provide. If you're burning Blu-Ray not just for yourself, but also for others (like I do), it's saver to stay away from LTH for now.

Wd