yeah, you're right. playing the vobs directly, mounting the iso and playing, and burning the iso all work. jumped the gun on this one. i guess i just expect things to go wrong and need tweaking before i can get it to work in linux
btw, k9copy rocks. keeping the menu structure and subtitles allows dvds to now play in my standalone player; cmd line/other progs like xdvdshrink that only ripped 1 vid track never played right.