The playlist AnyDVD gives you is the playlist a retail Blu-ray player would play. If "the tools" cannot back it up, "the tools" need an update.
I believe the problem is there are
multiple, identical "good" playlists on the disc. Many of "the tools", when confronted with identical playlists, display
only the lowest-numbered of those lists and hide the rest. Meanwhile, the one "good" playlist number AnyDVD HD displays is
not the lowest-numbered, thus it is
not visible in "the tools"; further analysis of the disc with
other tools is necessary to find a playlist that is
both visible in "the tools"
and identical to the one AnyDVD HD says is "good".
If that were the
only consideration, I might agree with you that "the tools" are the problem. However, it's
also possible that Sony DADC is using this approach to confirm
how SlySoft is detecting the "good" playlist. I can't be certain myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if AnyDVD HD gets that playlist from disc menus just like retail players do. It's entirely possible that Sony DADC did this not only to confound "the tools", but also to confirm how AnyDVD HD gets it so that future menus can be rewritten to
hide it from AnyDVD HD (but not retail players).
For that reason, I believe the
correct response is for the AnyDVD HD status window to display
all playlists that are identical to the "good" one it detects, in either numerical or random order. That not only avoids reliance on how "the tools" deal with identical playlists, but also obfuscates exactly
which of the identical playlists AnyDVD HD detected, thus making it harder for Sony DADC to take countermeasures.
(Edit: Let's not forget that there's multiple versions of the disc out there, and each has a different "good" playlist--i.e., rental vs. retail and even different retail pressings. That confounds sharing of the "good" playlist number on boards like this.)