Sorry, don't know the answer either, but thought you may want to contact your local ASUS support through this page
http://support.asus.com/Hotlines.aspx?SLanguage=en, or even consider arranging an RMA later if necessary?
If you aren't worried about erasing Windows and think it's worth the trouble, try this to make sure nothing you have installed is causing problems.
If your unit came with the blu ray drive though, I would expect the software to play blu ray would be preinstalled, but it may be something you need to verify with your local support to confirm you should be receiving the blu ray software player and it was preinstalled in your system (instead of just the DVD player software).
Actually, I'm not sure if you can still download trial versions of blu ray software, but this might give you a better idea of the problem too.
Although you tried VLC, I thought you had to do more things to get it to play blu ray.
Good luck!