Compatibility Issues between Pioneer LX55 and Verbatium LTH Discs and More

[ses]

First of all, regards from Sweden. I have a Pioneer LX55 Bluray player. It plays manufactured Bluray films beautifully. Have had none of the problems that I have seen others encounter in webforums with this player. But, there is a great problem with my home produced family videos. It has a great problem with playing LTH discs. Until last week, I had no idea what a LTH disc was, but after failing with three attempts to burn with a Plextor burner, I began to learn about "Low to High" discs. I have played the discs on two other (far cheaper) Bluray players and they worked fine, but on my LX55 there is constant stuttering. Thinking perhaps somehow it was still the fault of the burner, I tried a new Asus BW-14D1XT. It could not burn LTH discs! In Image Burn, it would show massive amounts of I/O errors and just stop. So now, I have a player that can't play LTH and a burner that can't burn LTH!
I have also tried Verbatium BD-RE that are not LTH discs, they work better but there is still some intermittant stuttering with the LX55. I am using Encore to author the Bluray discs. Is the LX55 so sensitive that it can't handle home produced Bluray? or is it just a question of finding the "right" disc for the player? Is there a diffference between different LTH discs? I have assmed that I should just forget about LTH and give the rest of the discs to a neighbor!

[usually_quiet]

Verbatim, Panasonic, or FTI Falcon brand non-LTH BD-R discs have the best track record for compatibility with both players and burners.

You are indeed more likely to run into problems using BD-RE and BD-R LTH discs, even using the excellent products from one of these brands.

[turk690]

I am using Encore to author the Bluray discs...

I also mostly use Encore to author blu-rays and DVDs. What I never use in Encore is to use its burning facility to seek the local blu-ray writer & burn the authored disc on it. Chances are it will just produce a flaky disc that stutters, exactly like what you experience, LTH or otherwise.
What I'd do is choose the option "burn to a blu-ray image file". All of the contents of your authored disc will be put in one big *.iso file on your hard drive. Download and install everyone's favorite free CD burning program ImgBurn, open it, then choose "write image file to disc". Open the *.iso file created by Encore and burn away.
LTH discs have been here since about 2008, and current burners and players should be able to detect and play them correctly. That 14x Asus drive should have no problems with them, so should the Pioneer. If it does, there may be a firmware updates for doing so. If in its current state it genuinely is not capable of reading and writing LTH discs, you should find a way of getting back at the powers-that-be and let them have it. Asus do not make BD writers; that is a rebadged drive, probably originally by LiteOn, Samsung, LG, or someone else.
The world is flooded with a sea of optical disc media, a large part of them crappy blu-ray ones, LTH & whatnot. The only BD LTH discs I use are JVC-TY, part # J-BDR-25WS-25SB6L (partly because it has a glossy waterproof inkjet-printable label); it's one of those rare things that are still made in Japan.
Lastly, before burning (creating an *.iso) an authored job on Encore, it pays to duly preview it first to see if it plays and generally behaves as expected. Encore has options for checking to see if any blu-ray authoring rules have been violated for that job. You should ideally also have a blu-ray player program on the PC (like Cyberlink PowerDVD, basic versions of which come free with most Pioneer or LG blu-ray writers), with which to independently test the *.iso file (after it is mounted by, say, free Slysoft Virtual Clonedrive) outside of Encore before burning it to disc.