MPlayer: syntax for playing a DVD.
 

Kernel 2.6.21.5, GNU (slackware 12.0).
KDE 3.5.7.
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.1.2.

Hi:
I'm trying to play a DVD-Video disc (that is, an out-of-the-shelf video, or those you rent in a video club) with gmplayer (the GUI version of mplayer). The syntax is specified thus in the man page:
I do, in KDE, Main Menu>Run Command and, in the dialog box, I type 'gmplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hdd', where dvd-device is an option to select the dvd unit. Unfortunately, I get 'No stream found to handle url dvd://1. I don't get it. Am I not following the syntax? Thanks in advance.

gmplayer is the gui fromtend. You usually don't need to mount or specify the device. Track 1 might not be correct, you may want track 2. I would do

mplayer dvd://1 or
gmplayer, and use the menus.

The device is not mounted. I tried
(a) gmplayer dvd://2 ******** Same error.
(b) mplayer dvd://1 ********* Exits immediately.
(c) gmplayer **************** Here in Preferences>Misc I can set the dvd device and the cd-rom device. After this, all I can do is to click an icon that takes me to a window entitled Select File. But of course I don't want to select any files but a device. It's the media I want to select; not any particular file. mplayer seems not to understand this. Well, thanks for your reply and regards.

P.S: in said window, I can select /dev but among the subdirs of /dev I do not find any which seems appropriate for the case at hand.

From memory.

gmplayer without filename, click or right click on the open disc symbol, select dvd from the menu. You could also put a symlink /dev/dvd pointing at the dvd device.

Try to play the files directly. Mount the dvd somewhere then:
or

Hi:

I think it's a problem inherent to the DVD unit. By ejecting and ("opposite action of eject", I do not know the verb) the tray several times, at last clicking the Play icon on the wheel, I make it start. I've also had problems in mounting DVDs in that unit. However, several times when mplayer would not play the DVD, I did 'cdrecord -media-info dev=1001,0,0' and cdrecord saw the DVD. I'll begin by throwing the unit to the trash can and buying a new one. Lite-on never more. Thanks anyway for all your help. Regards.