Hi, I have a dvd trilogy, "Millenium" from Stieg Larsson. I can't play it.

vlc says "input output error"

My girlfriend has a laptop bought in Germany. It can play the dvd in Windows. When I try that on my Chinese Windows, I get "You need to set up the area" message.

How can I tell vlc in Linux which area, part of the world, I am in, so it can play the dvd??? Is that a system variable?? It is a German dvd so maybe I need to tell my system it is German.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code

Depends on yourDVD player whether it can be changed:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-l...d-region-code/

this should be possible with vlc.
please try to open the dvd from inside vlc (open vlc first, then menu -> open dvd) and play it. then it probably doesn't work as you described.

at the very least you should get some meaningful error messages: please set the verbosity level in tools -> messages to 1 or 2, try again, have a good look at the messages and post again here.

nope, vlc can't play it. Just get what I said above "input output error"

I set my Chinese Windows to "Germany" in a country dialogue which came up when I tried to play it. Then it played fine.

There must be an equivalent in Linux. I am set to Shanghai in my Linux. I'll try setting it to Germany, see if that does the trick.

But I thought there may be a system variable something like "SET_LOCATION=GER"

why do you think it's a problem with the location or area when you just get an i/o error?

please look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_re...re_DVD_players
maybe it has to do with libdvdcss? just a guess.

how exactly are you getting the error message? is it a pop-up window? somehow i can't imagine a program as well-made as vlc to throw you such a non-descript error message.

in what location is it looking for the disc? /dev/cdrom, /dev/dvd, /dev/sr0?
i usually have to set it to /dev/sr0 everytime i open a disc...

again, try to get more meaningful messages, either as suggested earlier, or by starting vlc from a terminal, and watch the output when attempting to play the dvd.

are other dvd's working with vlc?

I only tried it in Ubuntu. Today I just tried it in Fedora, and that works. Must be a Ubuntu specific problem. I know there is not much that vlc can't play!

That was a good tip, start it in a terminal. Tried that in Fedora, I get a lot of output. Next time something won't play, I'll do that!

could you mark this as solved please.