MBP Not reading certain CDs

Hi,
We've just bought a brand new 2GHz MacBook Pro with an extra 512Mb RAM installed (by Apple). After dutifully downloading about 400Mb of updates, including upgrading it to OSX 10.4.7 and downloading a firmware update (everything went fine), we started to play around with it.
First disk I put in was a Futurama (Season 4) DVD - Apple DVD Player asked to confirm the region selection and said that "The region could only be changed 5 more times" - the disk played fine through both DVD player and Front Row.
Next, I ejected this and put a music CD in (Jools Holland: Swinging the Blues, Dancing the Ska), but the MBP just spat this out. Next, I tried the Office '04 Student Edition installer CD, and after about 3 mins of clicking and whirring, this got spat out too. Thinking we had a dead CD drive on our hands, I tried 3 more music CDs - all worked fine -opened up in iTunes and Front Row and played fine. I even tried the installer CD for Photoshop CS2 and this worked fine, so did the Mac OSX Installer DVD (only software DVD to hand...). A CD that was burnt on our G4 Tower also worked fine
I tried the two problem CDs in my G4 PowerBook (OSX 10.4.5), and they worked absolutely fine.
I've done the basic troubleshooting things - reboot, repair permissions, reboot again, create another user account to see if the problem still exists, and there's no change - the two CDs keep on getting rejected by the MBP.
What's going on here - is there an easy way to resolve this problem without taking the laptop on a 3 hour round-trip drive back to the Apple store? Everything else about it's fine - there is a slight whine but nothing at all to moan about (only noticable when actually listening for it). Are there any prefs files I can trash?
The MBP has the SuperDrive, whereas the PB only has a DVD/CD-RW Combo drive.
Thanks for the help

The region limitation is explained here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60183
While there are some region free DVD players, none of the ones I've seen on Macs are.
Also Macs don't support Copy Protected CDs:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106882
Disks you've created on media which is not compatible with the drive may also pose a problem:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58641
I've also found a lot of bad media out there. Media stored on spindles have a tendency to last much shorter than media stored in jewelcases.
The fact the Office disk got spat out suggests the drive or the disk in question may be becoming dirty.
While there are disk drive cleaners out there, if your machine is under warranty, I'd recommend you stick with having AppleCare take care of it. Note, with notebook computers you often don't have to drive anywhere. Just call AppleCare, and they'll ship you a box to have it repaired by their service center. Before you do that, backup your data, and be sure to keep track of any case numbers they give you.
As for your MacBook Pro:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303365
is recognized as something to contact AppleCare about.

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