The Blu-Ray Recorder will be available soon but there’s a catch. It won’t read the Blu-Ray movies. Funny? Guess not.

Sony officially announced its BWU-100A product at its “Experience More 2006″ event in Sydney yesterday.

Vincent Bautista, Sony’s product manager for data storage, said that one of the reasons behind this problem is due to copy protection issues and lagging software development. This is why the drive will only play user-recorded high-definition content from a digital camcorder, and not commercial movies released under the BD format.

Second, there is only one videocard capable of HDCP. Its name is X1600 Pro and it has HDMI capabilities.

Today, the only HDCP-supporting BD playback application is the OEM version of Intervideo WinDVD BD that’s bundled with Sony’s VAIO VGN-AR18GP notebook. The AR18GP also offers an HDCP-compliant HDMI connector, which makes it capable of playing commercial movies without issue.

Bautista is optimistic that both issues will be resolved “soon”, and says that despite not being able to play commercial content, the drive is still useful as a “storage device”, particularly for those looking to create and distribute their own high-definition home movies on BD-R and BD-RE discs.

The BWU-100A has a write speed of 2x, is able to burn both single and dual layer BD-R and BD-RE disks and will be available later this month for around $750 USD.