Metropol

Recently bought a HP BluRay Laptop, thought would be good to play BR's via HD TV. Try to play them via TV and the rights protection kicks in and switches off the DVD.

Is this 'normal' or have I screwed up with the selection of PC, or set up?

Normal, get a TV which is compliant with HDCP.

It's probably the graphics card on the laptop. NVIDIA are quietly disabling the ability to play fullscreen DVDs or downloaded videos on your TV in their new cards. They're even putting out driver updates so they can disable the function for older cards, too.