Inconsistent DVD accessibility

[Tommy Trussell]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 2:22 AM, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 8:46 PM, Tommy Trussell
> <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> :
> >  It could be an issue of region codes or other DRM built into the
> hardware.
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code#Computer_DVD_drives
> >
>
> Except, as I said, it works fine in the laptop, which has the same
> region coding as the desktop - both do US (region 1) DVDs,  Most DVDs
> work fine in both.  It's just these two that have been working in the
> laptop and not the desktop.
>
>
I'm digging back to an old part of this thread because I was rushed the
other day and didn't get back to you. Did you get it resolved?

Before this week I haven't tried to play DVDs on my new-ish laptop, and
despite installing DVDCSS etc. I found that this particular laptop could
play one or two movie DVDs but most would spin then stop without playing.

I knew it was probably a region thing, as I had mentioned to you, because I
have encountered this before. If your drive has NO region set, it will stop
working. If you have a region set, the drive will work, and then it's up to
VLC or whatever to use or ignore the region code.

SO I found this:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs

Sure enough, I installed the regionset package, set the region to 1, which
covers most DVDs I ever encounter here in Arkansas, USA... (IF VLC
respected the region code, which I believe it doesn't).

I executed the command

$ sudo regionset /dev/sr0

and followed the prompts.

Now I am able to play the DVDs that failed before.

IMPORTANT: Your DVD drive only allows you to set the region code a limited
number of times, so I suggest you might read the README file for regionset
very carefully.

Also, I wasn't absolutely sure what device my DVD drive mounts to, so I
used the log file viewer to look in the syslog to see that it mounts to
/dev/sr0. (This is on an Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty" system. I'm not sure whether
it's different under 16.04 "Xenial.")
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