Can't play movie DVDs in Natty on HP laptop

[Ric Moore]

On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 14:01 +0100, Adam Funk wrote: 
> On 2011-06-16, Ric Moore wrote:
> 
> >      A. On Thu, 2011-06-16 at 12:03 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 11:03, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > I've written recently about some interesting situations with a recent
> >> > acquisition of mine (a used HP NW9440 laptop) and all the fun I've had with
> >> > it so far (ick).
> >> > It turns out that not only does it not play Avatar, it won't play any normal
> >> > DVD with a movie in widescreen on it.  It plays 4x3 ratio DVDs without any
> >> > trouble, and I can play the .avi rips I made on my desktop with the laptop,
> >> > but not the DVDs.
> >> > I'm using VLC and mplayer, both of which fail.
> >> > These DVDs play just fine under Windows 7 on the same laptop, so I'm
> >> > reasonably sure it isn't the hardware, but under Natty, no such luck.  The
> >> > DVDs also play perfectly on my desktop, but that's never been a problem.
> >> > My VLC and mplayer installations are straight from synaptic, so these are
> >> > standard installations AFAIK.
> >> > What am I missing?
> >> >
> >> 
> >> sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
> >> sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
> >
> > It's that last bit that isn't widely known. Ric
> 
> The effect is the same as adding the Medibuntu repository & installing
> libdvdcss, isn't it?

That is where it comes from, isn't it? I guess the legal bit is the
reason for it. If you get hauled off to the pokey, you cannot say that
"They did it to me! I didn't KNOW!" <sobs uncontrollably>

Nope, you have to manually launch the command line bit to config and
launch it. Makes sense, no idea if that is it though. Ric


-- 
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256