Well, here's the funny thing - I have used Ridata discs (25gb) for smaller movies. This was before I knew there could be such a difference in media. I had no problem with recording or playback using those discs, and they are supposed to be kind of the bottom of the barrel. Anyway, I'm gonna take Lightnings advice as well as yours and do the following:
1. contact cd freaks about the firmware flash
2. Contact TDK about their product (they have a tech support line)
3. buy a verbatim disc and see if any change.
I also tried to burn with nero, this is the software that came with the BD drive, sent them a log, we'll see. I just like ImgBurn better, i use it all the time with DVD's - and in fact on the smaller blu-ray movies, it works great as the burner after making an iso of the BDMV folder.
Anyway, thanks for the help and I will keep moving forward with this.
saphire199