[Roymus]

All: I scanned the threads for an answer to this question but didn't see anything directly. I bought a new Sony Vaio VGNFZ285U (Windows Ultimate with WinDVD 8 and a Blu-Ray drive). The laptop has an HDMI connector so you can watch Blu-Ray movies on your 1080P HDTV (in my case a Mitsubishi 75831). I bought "300" and popped it into the Sony to see how it looked on the laptop...ok but not impressive (the screen does not support 1080P). I then hooked up the laptop to my HDTV via HDMI. The laptop display looks great on my TV, but when I tried to play the movie using WinDVD I received the message "Stop. Your display environment does not support protected content" and playback stops. I tested playing a regular DVD and it worked fine. I assume this is some kind of newfangled macrovision copy protection to prevent routing the signal to another device and copying the movie. So here's my questions:

1. Is it possible to play the movie on my HDTV using another player besides WinDVD? If so, which one? I don't mind buying another software player if I know it works.

2. Is the copy protection specific to Mitsubishi (i.e., is there something in the TV firmware that's telling WinDVD to stop playing)? If so, is there a way to defeat it?

3. If #2 is correct, are there Blu-Ray movies that don't have this kind of protection? If not, shouldn't Sony compensate me for selling me a player that won't work under any circumstances?

Sorry if this has been covered...thanks!

Roy