It's a fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04.4. Bought a new dvd/cd player. Insert a DVD movie from a store and no movie!
I can see the dvd icon show up on the side of the unity display and I can see the title of the movie when I click on the icon, but it will not play! Then I installed video player cause the popup said I needed MP2 to play the dvd. So I installed it, nothing started playing. So then I installed mplayer, nothing started playing. So then I installed VLC and nothing started playing.

So what's with this? Nothing seems to get the DVD player to work.

What is the make/model of the DVD player?

When it's plugged in, does it show in the command lspci or lsusb?

Open VLC, and use the menu to open the DVD in VLC. See if that does the job.

I used ddcopy to make my usb drive. I tried ventoy and it destroyed the usb. It says "Laurensory" on the front of the player and "Gotega" on the pamphlet. The pamphlet also mentions VLC media player. Pamphlet also mentions K3b for Linux. Opening VLC I could not find anything that would open and play the DVD. The Player is connected directly to the "C" port on the backside of a NUC.
lsusb and lspci do not show any indication that I could see that the player is detected. However I do see an icon appear and the title of the DVD and I see AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders. Those wanted the video player installed to play mp2 files, but it didn't after install.
I get as far as inserting the disk, selecting the file and opening it with VLC and selecting "PLAY". A file with a picture shows up with a "PLAY" and I click on that. The DVD starts humming again, heads go in and out, led blinks, etc... etc... . Then a big-fat-nothing!

I bought this player so my wife can read and transfer hundreds of photos that are on CD from the photo shop from back when they quit printing photos and and put them onto CDs. The Player just keeps loading and trying, rinse and repeat. The movies at least it shows a title and the cover art.

Hey thanks! I followed the instructions at itsfoss.com and voila! Got a movie playing! mplayer wouldn't but after fussing around with VLC a movie started to play!

This may require a new thread, but I want to know more about this. a Ventoy install should OVERWRITE the USB device, not damage it. I have never had any of these tools "destroy" any device. What do you mean by destroy: what exactly did you do and what are the symptoms of the resulting issue?

Oh very good!