Does anyone know what tools (cords etc.) i need in order to watch a DVD movie on my Compaq Armada Laptop?

Mplayer
http://mplayerhq.hu

Dont forget a DVD of your choice and DVD player as well..

( I know that was a smartass post I made, oh well, its still true though.. )

And who bumps whos own posts totals?????

go for MPlayer, I don't know anything about this laptop but if it is getting a touch old then MPlayer should be perfect for you (hell, it's perfect on a 2.6GHz cpu as well...) if it running too slow, read carefully through the manpage and try some options such as -framedrop and make sure you are usign the most efficient outptu mode avaialbe to you, probably -vo xv and certainly not -vo x11 as this will use about twicve as much cpu power.

Okay thanks all.

Another dumb question. Where (what site) do i download Mplayer from? I just now checked the site that NEO posted and i can't find it.

Worked for me.. maybe your browser had a brainfart.. try it with the www in it.. http://www.mplayerhq.hu

Do I sense some jealousy? hehe..

Hi Tricky,

Thanks. is this the file that i would download? see below?

-> http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel....90rc1.tar.bz2

JeeZ!! Yes that's the file.

save it somewhere under your home directory and run
tar jxvf filename from that directory.

now cd to the directory it deflates into, read the README and INSTALL (text files) and ./configure --help to see how well you can customize your install if you need to.
OR
./configure && make && make install keep everything to default.


Now's the time to check the mplayer manpage.

well that's an old version now, rc2 is available and should have been in the list you chose that one from, but the differences are not worth worrying about for now. please take note that there is a LOT of documentation on the mplayer site, and information in ti's email archives, so if you have a problem always check there first before asking a brand new question.
No, as I do it much more subtely, and pretend i have a reason to do it!

Thanks all,

I'll do some more reading. Because now i am getting an error message that i do not have a DVD decoder.

I was going to try to watch the DVD movie "Minority Report" on my Laptop. but i keep running into computer problems. When i inserted the DVD, a Dreamworks screen popped up instead of the Mplayer screen box. Then it said i do not have a DVD decoder. WTH !!! (what the heck!). Anyways......

I'm computer illiterate on this new DVD movie stuff.

I finally have the mplayer box screen, but i'm not sure how to get the dang DVD movie to play. Teehee !

I found with my laptop that the gui mplayer was useless. do a "man mplayer" at the command line and look at the wealth of information there. Then create a script that has all the options you need.

Some of the options I found I needed "-dvd-device", "-dvd 1", "-nolirc", "-nojoystick", "-stop_xscreensaver", and "-fs".

These may or may not be of use to you, but regardless, check out the man page.

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Jeremiah