Can't play movie DVDs in Natty on HP laptop

[Ric Moore]

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

Also, if his problem has anything to do with DMA settings for an IDE
connected CD/DVD device, I used this to fix that:

This worked!!! 

-----------------------------------------------------
Workaround (for my case) is found on Bug #292142

(1) Create new file => sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/options
(2) Add this => options pata_ali atapi_dma=1
(3) Edit this => sudo nano /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
(4) Add this => pata_ali atapi_dma=1
(5) Run this => sudo update-initramfs -u
(6) Reboot system.

* System is fast again!
* Burning DVDs never uses more than 28% CPU load.
* Burning speed is now 3.90x (Media is limited to 4.0x)

The above is applicable to Ubuntu 10.04.x LTS.

I'm now on Natty <gasp!> and am still showing the same old problem. So,
I just applied this myself. 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