Problems watching new DVDs (like The Matrix Reloaded)
 

I am attempting to watch newer movies such as The Matrix Reloaded and Pirates of the Carribean on Linux. Xine won't play either, so I downloaded mplayer which will play them, but they are totally messed up. I think I might have the wrong codec, but I don't know which codec I need. When I put either of the DVDs into my DVD player in Windows, an InterActual player thingy pops up. Any ideas?

there's a lot of people here who can help you with mplayer, but you'll have to be more specific about the totally messed up part.

"Totally messed up" as in squares with changing multiple colors in them that seem to form together and occasionally you will see a clear second of the movie. The sound was totally garbled and is just little pieces that don't even sound like they're in order. All of that is while attempting to watch "Pirates of the Carribean" with mplayer. When attempting to watch the matrix, I got the same multicolored mess thing, but the sound was in order although rather choppy. After about watching the beginning of the movie for about 20 seconds I got an error message saying my computer is too slow to play the sound and another error message talking about there being too many packets or something. Any Ideas? Has anyone successfully watched one of these newer movies in Linux?

The scrambled/messed up part sounds like copy protection. You need to make sure you have the latest DeCSS library installed for your distribution in order to watch movies encoded with Macrovision software.

Due to the questionable legals status of DeCSS (particularly in the USA) not all distributions ship with it preinstalled - although it is generally still easy to find on the web.

GJ

Thank you!
I just downloaded libdvdcss and I'm about to install it.