Since I dropped my old laptop, and lost my Windows 7 disk, I’ve been pretty happy with my move to Ubuntu. Except I can’t seem to play DVDs. Some work, some don’t. I’m using VLC media player, but I’m not getting any response. It will show the menu, but that is it..

Any ideas? Do I need to download something?

Cheers All!

I run Ubuntu on one of my laptops, but I just use XBMC to play media from another machine.

This link https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/musicvideophotos/C/video-dvd.html may help you

Cheers- I’ve given that a go- Terminal says ‘libdvdread4’ doesn’t exist, even after I have downloaded it 🙁

Have you installed the restricted extras? I think you need it to play mp3, dvd etc.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

what bawbag said – it gives all the video codecs and support for non-open source file formats etc including mp3 etc

Yup, I ‘ve downloaded all of that. Still no joy.. any other options?

I went through it all again in terminal

“joe@joe-Studio-1555:~$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
[sudo] password for joe:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
ubuntu-restricted-extras is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded.
joe@joe-Studio-1555:~$”

So the package is installed, it just doesn’t seem to be working properly. 🙁

Could it be region settings on your drive? What are the differences between the ones that work and the ones that don’t?

Do divx files and mp3’s play?

Maybe a DVD drive lens cleaner? Try the DVD’s on another player…..that’s all I can think of right now.

This may be of use: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs

run vlc on the command line, start a DVD which you know not to work and see what if there are any messages on the command line.

Failing that, have you tried Totem?

Cheers chaps- mp3s work fine, as do all audio files. I’ve tried several DVDs on VLC and Movie Player, the only one I could get to work was an obscure nz film river queen.

I’ll give totem a try when I get home. I did wonder if I had damaged the drive when I droppedthe laptop, but he drive works fine with all other media..

I’d guess a (lack of) libdvdcss problem:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs

This is why I install Linux Mint instead of vanilla Ubuntu. I’ve installed Ubuntu a couple of times and it has hiccuped with codecs leading to clean installs again from another burnt disc (yes, you can badly burn an ubuntu/mint dvd to install from and it appears to install, but doesn’t work ‘right’ so we might as well shorten the procedure)

Considered downloading images and putting them on a USB stick to install from?

I tried Mint last night from a DVD to see what all the fuss was about. Looked nice but will stick with Ubuntu 12.04 for a bit. What are the main advantages of Mint?

mrdestructo – it came from a commercial disc from a magazine, so it wasn’t burnt.

I have libdvdcss . I’ve downloaded it a couple of times now. Is it a matter of getting VLC to recognise it?

VLC will recognise it has a disc, display the title, and I can hear it begin to read the disc. Then it doesn’t do anything.

Did you try what I suggested? (running it in a terminal and seeing if there is any text shown on it when you press play)

At least you might get some error messages you can google