Getting dvd to play

[Nigel Henry]

On Saturday 10 January 2009 21:25, Linda wrote:
> I finally got around to installing a dvd player. I followed the
> instructions for Resticted Formats Playing DVD someone posted for me
> last week, but I get an error message from Totem Movie Player that it
> can not read from resource.
> If I try to play a commercial dvd  from VLC  I get  a title page showing
> the movies title with a choice to play movie and some other things but
> in about 1 second it disappears and I have the choice to push play pause
> etc across the top and a blank white box. If I push play it repeats
> title then blank screen
>
> At this point I can play a home movie dvd with Totem or VLC although it
> does give me a green stripe across the bottom of the frame.
>
> Can anyone give me any suggestions on how to get the commercial dvds to
> play?
>
> In your opinion which program is the best choice for playing DVD there
> are quite a few of them?
>                             Thanks
>                              Linda

Hi Linda.

Have you installed the libdvdcss2 package , which is necessary for decrypting 
most commercial dvd's. You can get it from the medibuntu repo, details below.

Do an apt-get install medibuntu-keyring

This will get you the keys for the medibuntu repo.

Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list.d

deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ intrepid free non-free

Now do an apt-get update, then, apt get install libdvdcss2

As to which app works best, all I can say is that usually I find VLC works 
best, but ironically on both Ubuntu, and Kubuntu Intrepid 8.10, I can't get 
it to play a DVD at all. Anyway we'll leave that aside, as I'm working on it, 
and have other distros on the same machine where VLC works with no problems.

I do though have both Totem, and Ogle playing DVD's ok on Ubuntu Intrepid 
8.10.

All the best.

Nigel.