DVD Playback testing in Hardy Heron

[Stuart Guest]

I did some testing with regard to playing DVDs in a completely
up-to-date Hardy, as requested in the comments for Bug #181236, and have
detailed my findings below.

Totem-gstreamer asked for permission to search for the appropriate
codecs, after which it played DVDs, but without giving access to the
menu.

Totem-xine, upon being selected for installation, simply added the
required files for playback.  When a DVD was inserted it started up
automatically, with access to the menus.

Please note that both of the versions of Totem mentioned above are
recognized by Nautilus, in the DVD Video drop-down box, found under
Media in File Management Preferences.

In my testing I found that gxine will play DVDs, but only if the user
specifically goes to the gxine application, under Sound & Video in the
Applications menu, as it does not seem to be one of the applications
recognized by Nautilus, unlike Totem.

I still favour totem-xine, since it allows automatic playback of DVDs,
makes DVD menus available, and is recognized by Nautilus, as mentioned
above.  There is no real appreciable difference in the files installed
by totem-xine as compared to gxine, and I have attached a couple of
screenshots to demonstrate this fact.

Please note that removing totem-gstreamer does not affect searching for
codecs in any way.  I tested this after totem-gstreamer had been
uninstalled by attempting to play some music in RhythmBox, which brought
up the same codec permissions box as totem-gstreamer.

Apart from installing libdvdread3, and using that to install libdvdcss2,
as detailed in the current DVD playback instructions, I did not have to
install any other software.

One more thing that came to my attention -- if the user attempts to
uninstall totem-gstreamer before marking totem-xine for installation
then Hardy tries to remove the other remaining totem files.  If
totem-xine is marked for installation before totem-gstreamer, though,
then it happily replaces it without any problems whatsoever.

I hope I've been clear enough as to my findings! :-)

Regards,

Stuart






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