Blu-ray playback on PC isn't living up to the hype for my set up, need help!

[willrs]

Alright, so a few months ago, I built myself a new computer with all the new technologies so I wouldn't have to upgrade for a while (specs below). Of course I got a blu-ray drive even though I didn't have any blu-rays at the time. When I got it, I put Vista 64 on it but it didn't play well with my music software and I reformatted and put on XP 32. However the drive was recognized in Vista as a blu-ray drive opposed to it being seen as a dvd-ram drive in XP. So my friend lets me borrow the blu-ray version of Harold & Kumar: Escape From Gitmo and of course it doesn't work. I first tried using powerdvd7 that came with the drive. upon loading the disk (windows detected it in the drive) it would spin up and the powerdvd7 would say i needed an update before i could play it and direct me to the download. upon downloading and installing the patch it would say the same thing. over and over. I probably downloaded and installed the patch 5 times before I gave up and went out and bought Arcsoft TMT 3. This software seemed a lot more polished and i was excited to finally be able to experience the blu-ray glory. sadly that was not the case. tmt3 would recognize the disk and automatically start to play it, however the screen would just be blank and it would be stuck on Title 001 Chapter 004. Someone suggested that my video card and monitor might not be hdcp compliant, but it is (check the specs). At this point, i'm kinda over it and I tell myself that it will work when I upgrade to vista. so life goes on, newegg 30 day return policy expires, i'm sick of only being able to use 3 gigs of ram, and i now have The Dark Knight and Iron Man on blu-ray, it's time to upgrade. to make a long story short i got the same exact problems in vista64, except i am now able to see the contents of the blu-rays when they are in the drive. oh and i also bought powerdvd9 ultra which loads the blu-ray and then tells me "Your disk drive does not support the content of this drive." sweet. so i'm starting to get depressed when one of my buddies tells me about the windows 7 RC trial.
I get that, 64bit version, load up my system with all my music and editing software, everything works flawlessly. at this point i'm stoked and the icing on the cake would be that my blu-rays play. no cigar. here's the breakdown of what each player does in Win7.

Cyberlink Powerdvd7 (disk that came with the drive):
same problem, endless updates that don't accomplish anything

Cyberlink Powerdvd9 Ultra:
same error message "Your disk drive does not support the content of this drive."

Nero Showtime:
error message "This disk type currently is not supported." I heard there's a plugin that gives support but i have a feeling it won't work.

Arcsoft TMT3:
something actually works!...kinda
When I put in The Dark Knight it tells me i need to update my player to support newer blu-ray disk features. i download and install the update, open tmt and it loads instantly and tells me it doesn't support a mouse and to use its little remote thingy, then the special features menu pops up. I use the software remote (keyboard nav doesn't work) to navigate over to play movie and select, the screen goes blank and the little play and pause icons flash a bunch of times in the top left corner then it throws me back into the special features menu. I can also nav over to scene selection and select any scene, but when it tries to play it, the same thing happens, play and pause alternate and it throws me back into the special features menu.
For Iron Man it's completely different, except for the part where the movie doesn't play. When I put the disk in, tmt3 opens and takes forever to load the disk. after about 5 minutes the iron man chest powersupply logo thing comes up and it asks me if i want to download the bd-live content, if i say yes it downloads it and then takes me to the main menu, if i say no it just takes me straight to the main menu. I've never seen Iron Man on blu-ray before but it looks like the main menu didn't load right or it's just very lackluster, anyway i can use to keyboard to navigate, but the only thing i can select is play and scene selection. play goes to a blank black screen and does nothing, except the Title and Chapter numbers change from either T004 to T009 and CH001 to CH612. very strange. when i go to scene selection it freezes. That's where I am now, very confused and frustrated. sorry for length and any spelling or grammar errors, i was just trying to be as detailed as possible. i hope someone on here can help me out, i'm losing faith in blu-ray :[

Specs:
AMD Phenom II 955 Black Edition
ATI Radeon HD4870 1gb (with dvi and hdmi out, tried both)
8gb ddr3 1600
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P (F3 bios version)
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray / HD-DVD SATA combo drive with Firmware v1.03
LG Flatron w2353v 1920x1080 with either dvi or hdmi
WD Raptor 150gb SATA
WD Caviar 1TB SATA
550watt psu