Hi all,

Well my Samsung stand-alone DVD player went bust last week, so I figured I'd simply watch my classic Monty Python DVD collection using a PC instead. I have enough to chose from, after all. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have been unable to play a single episode all the way through if at all without encountering some error or other. Sometimes I'll get a few minutes in and all seems fine whereupon I suddenly get a message telling me the disk is encrypted and can't be read! Or on another system using a different distro, something else won't be right and the app will terminate. I've tried playing DVDs with Kaffeine, KMPlayer, Mplayer and Xine on various boxes with various distros and NONE of them will play a single disk properly!
What's the deal here and how do I get to watch those whacky Brits tomorrow afternoon as tradition dictates?

THanks!!

CC.

Not sure, I have never had a problem playing any media personally. Which distributions specifically did you have problems under?

I've had no success with all the latest versions of Mint, PCLinuxOS, OpenSolaris and Fedora. Each on different hardware, too.

Most multimedia formats are a mess of onerous licensing and patents. As such, distros are either not legally able to distribute the software necessary to play them, or are philosophically opposed to doing so.

Mint is an exception in providing non-free multimedia software out of the box, although they do also provide a "universal" edition for distributors in Japan and U.S., which lacks proprietary and patent-encumbered software.

Why you can't play your DVD on Mint, unless you're using this version, is a bit of a mystery.

But in general, you need to install libdvdread and libdvdcss to play commercial DVDs.

The message I get with Mint is something like, "this disk is encrypted. You are not trying to play this disk without libdvdcss installed, are you?"
It didn't make any sense to me, because this error happened after it had been playing the DVD fine for several minutes! If it were an encryption issue, I would have thought it would not have been possible for it to even begin to play the disk. I should also say this is a regular DVD issue of Mint in English, but it's Gloria rather than Helena, so slightly older, if that makes any difference.

Just curious.

Have you gone into synaptic package manager in mint and see if the 2 packages reed9 recommended were even installed? Also have you ever done a

Before opening synaptic package manager and doing a search for the 2 packages reed9 recommended and seeing if they needed to be upgraded also if installed?

You will probably find that after following reed9s advice, you too will be able to watch dvds using Linux.

By the way. A Windows CD does not come with codecs for viewing DVDs. You have to pay cash to do that. Unless you buy a preinstalled rig that has Windows preinstalled and the manufacturer of said rig includes the codecs. Hope that answers your question. Happy Trails, Rok

RestrictedFormats - Community Ubuntu Documentation - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs - Community Ubuntu Documentation - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...ts/PlayingDVDs
The Unofficial Fedora® FAQ - http://www.fedorafaq.org/#dvd
VLC media player for Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-debian.html

Very odd. I have rebooted Mint and carried out no updates at all (no net connection at present anyway), yet so far I have got way past episode 1 with no error messages at all. Previously it always failed at some point. Perhaps if I reboot it enough times it sorts the problem out itself?? This is a new install and maybe the Movieplayer is a self-repairing, journalising one. :-) Sure beats me anyhow!

I would try an update if you continue having problems. This may be a bug that has been fixed in later releases.

Give VLC a try. That tends to be the prime answer to nearly any video and audio media format problem (other than encrypted Windows Media files, which should simply be shunned and ignored anyway).