SONY blu-ray player BDP-S300 is being sold everywhere for about $449 which is the lowest for blu-ray players. And they are flying off the shelves which is good for SONY.
But ..... Can someone explain to me WHY on earth would SONY make a big seller blu-ray player that would not play a blu-ray disk that is produced from their own SONY Vegas software ??????
I still can't offer my clients blu-ray disk because I can't guarantee it would play on their player. And I can't ask a customer to buy a certain player to play my blu-ray disk. It just does not make any sense to me.
Here we are shooting HD and upgrading our cameras and software and still can't deliver a HD product that we can count on.

because Sony does not want you to be able to produce bluray video disk.
they make money by selling bluray disk to majors (they got the money from the license needed to produce the layer on the disk).
Additionally , they sold the "unbreakable" protection scheme with the bluray concept, so producing a software and burner that could write bluray video at home would be surely a breach.
they have done the same with the PSP tiny disk, that why it was a failure.
seems they are not learning from their mistakes.
Hopfully HD-DVD is there......

I don't know that you can attribute motives. It seems to be a player by player thing.

Here's a compatibility list that I copied from this thread: http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-1561.html

Playstation 3 (1.6 + DVDit patch) ------- BD-R, BD-RE

Sony BDP-S1 (1.55) ------- BD-R, BD-RE, DVD-R (when AACS folder is removed)

Pioneer Elite BDP-HD1 ------- BD-R, BD-RE

Samsung BD-P 1000 (1.0 firmware) ------- BD-R, BD-RE

Samsung BD-P 1200 ------- BD-R (mixed results - could be certain media that works)

Panasonic DMP-BD10 ------- BD-R, BD-RE, DVD-R

Philips BDP9000 ------- unknown

LG BH-100 ------- no

Sony BDP-300-----Not at this time...awaiting firmware update

As far as PS3...supposedly it will not play BDAV discs. Firmware 1.6 gives BDMV playback

I don't know about this specific case, but a friend of mine who is a former VP of Sony told me that there are numerous examples of the Sony hardware guys wanting to bring out neat products (DVD copier anyone?) that everyone would love to have, and having the ideas squashed by the movie studio side of Sony who were worried about lost revenue.

I might be wrong but I was thinking any Blu-Ray writer 2x and up was movie speed compatible. Required Movie speed on HD needs to be at least 54Mps data transfer rate. Any burner 2x or better would qualify. Sony also posted on Nov. 2nd 2007 a firmware update for their BDP-S300 player v3.60

Quote from Sony's Web Site:
This utility updates the BDP-S300 firmware to version 3.20, and provides the following benefits:

Improvements over firmware version 2.60:

Improves BD-Java compatibility to enhance interactivity with some BD-ROMs.

Compatibility with the newly released BD-R/RE format (BDMV).
Additional improvements over original firmware:

Improves BD-Java compatibility to enhance interactivity with some BD-ROMs.

[QUOTE=George Judds;771879]I might be wrong but I was thinking any Blu-Ray writer 2x and up was movie speed compatible. Required Movie speed on HD needs to be at least 54Mps data transfer rate. Any burner 2x or better would qualify. Sony also posted on Nov. 2nd 2007 a firmware update for their BDP-S300 player v3.60

I did burn the blu-ray disk at 1x and 2x and both did not play on the SONY BDP-S300. But they did play on the BDP-S500 (which is $600-$700).

And I don't think your average customer who buys A blu-ray player will know how to updates to a new firmware on his player.

And I don't think the new firmware will play burned blu-ray anyway.

I believe that the problem revolves around AACS file protection. I don't see that listed in the above fixes.

The 300 with updates still will not play desktop-burned BD's. I wish it would, as that's what I've got in my house, as opposed to our studio.