[PLUG] CD/DVD Drive and Movie Software: Xubuntu-9.04

[Carlos Konstanski]

On Thu, 26 Nov 2009, m0gely wrote:

> Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:09:32 -0800
> From: m0gely <m0gely at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> To: Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>,
>     "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] CD/DVD Drive and Movie Software: Xubuntu-9.04
> 
> Rich Shepard wrote:
>>     There's a cd/dvd drive in the Toshiba Satellite. Inserting a movie dvd is
>> easy: press the button on the drawer and it opens. After that it gets rather
>> screwy.
>>
>>     On the Applications->Multimedia menu is something called Movie Player.
>> When that is invoked it opens a large window, then displays a message box
>> that it's missing all requisite plug-ins (!). Strange. Doesn't tell me
>> what's missing nor do I understand why they'd be missing in a clean
>> installation.
>>
>>     Thinking I could get past this I used the synaptic package manager to get
>> and install mplayer. However, when I try to play the disk in the drive I see
>> messages that there's something about the disk, or too many buffers are
>> loaded, and the mplayer window shows a psycadelic display of colored bars in
>> several vertical strips from the bottom of the window up. So I kill that
>> process and try to remove the disk by opening the drive door.
>>
>>     At this point a serious message box pops up with text that the drive is
>> not recogzined by HAL and must have been installed by aliens or something.
>> Never have seen any such reaction before. Need to resort to the straightened
>> paper clip to open the drive and remove the disk.
>>
>>     Does anyone have any ideas why both the software and the hardware are
>> acting as they are?
>
> Does the DVD have some advanced copy protection that could be
> interfering? Does it play on another computer? I use VLC for anything
> video related. I know people that swear by mplayer and that's fine, but
> it seems to take some extra tinkering that VLC doesn't.
>
> -- 
> m0gely

Seconded, VLC rocks. Or use ogle, which is a nice, direct way to play
a DVD.

Carlos