I have a few DVD's that I want to watch on my Linux box and was hoping someone can please tell me what exactly is needed on Gnome to get this guys playing. I don't want to have to load another media player like Mplayer since I am already using Totem (Movie Player) which is the default media player for Debian. Can someone please tell me what exactly I need to get a DVD playing in Debian? I did a search here on the forums and was unable to find anything specifically with just "dvd playback".

Thanks for any info!

What is the problem you are having? Can you open the DVD? Is the DVD scrambled?

When I simply insert the DVD in my DVDROM, it auto mounts and I hear the DVDROM spool up like a turbo. Then Totem auto launches and I get an error "can not read from resource".

That is all I get. I assume I am missing some plugin and or codec to read DVD's.

I have no idea what scrambled DVD is.

I'm at work right now and don't have it in front of me, but in last month's Linux Pro magazine (The one from England), they did a review of Etch, and how to install it with the new GUI installer. In that article, they referred to the codec's you need to play a DVD. When I get home, I will look for it and post it.

Scrambled means it plays but is distorted, which would mean you don't have the libdvdcss2 package.

Although maybe for Totem that error message just means that it could read the DVD but not decode it, so install libdvdcss2 and w32codecs, as outlined on this page, and try again.

I find VLC Can play back a lot of media that totem and the other players choke on..
I install this way..

Add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch main

Update and install the following:
# aptitude update
# aptitude install debian-multimedia-keyring
# aptitude update
# aptitude install vlc libdvdcss2 w32codecs mozilla-plugin-vlc

Then I use VLC as my media player of choice for all my video playback.. (Personal Preference)

I re-read the article in the July 2007 edition of Linux Pro Magazine. FOr DVD playback, it stated 2 suggestions. The primary suggestion was to install VLC like farslayer mentioned: apt-get install VLC. Apparently, VLC will play just about everything by default.

Their other suggestion is installing Automatix: www.getautomatix.com. Automatix helps find and install packages for Debian and Debain-based systems that are difficult to find. The screenshot they provide of Automatix shows AUD-DVD codecs. The installation is easy, and they provide the instructions on the page.

Hope this helps.

No. Automatix is actively dangerous, and you don't need it.

Why is Automatix dangerous? I'm not doubting you at all, I would just like to know what it is that makes it so.

You could follow the link he provided and read the reasons why.....

Sorry about that. I didn't notice the link until after I posted.

Thanks,

OMG, thank you for posting that link. You probably saved me a big headache. I was actually going to install Automatix tonight when I got home. If any of the critical issues would have happened, it would have left me dead in the water; and I'm not knowledgeable enough yet to have figured most of them out.

Yep, Automatix = Bad.

Using Automatix is both dangerous and unbalanced. The official community doesnt support it. Ubuntu itself , and Canonical the company that runs ubuntu, wont support it either. For issues reguarding why this is the case, run over to this link -- http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77440.html.

..which is the link I posted, btw