Comments on: How to watch DVD in Ubuntu Gutsy?

By: The Ultimate Guide To Manage Your Audio/Video Files In Linux - Make Tech Easier

The Ultimate Guide To Manage Your Audio/Video Files In Linux - Make Tech Easier — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:59:06 +0000

[...] Ubuntu does not allow you to play DVD movie due to legal and technical restrictions. You have to install the ubuntu-restricted-extra package and run the libdvdread3 installer script. Check the tutorial for detailed instruction. [...]

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:21:57 +0000

Hi,

Thanks Damien!

My brother was bugging me the other night about not being able to watch DVD’s as he was getting an error.

After reading this, it has shed a bit of light on things. Hopefully the codex will fix it.

Thanks again!

By: fadumpt

fadumpt — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:31:52 +0000

Not sure when the last time you played a DVD on Windows or Mac was but….

On windows, you had better have gotten a DVD playback software with your computer if you built it (or upgraded to DVD-Rom/RW) or else you’ll be stuck…and if you bought it retail…hope the company thought to ship it with software…dvd codecs are a nonfree thingy no matter what the OS

On Mac…while DVD software is built in, you’ll probably want to use VLC anyway because Mac’s DVD player is very useless beyond being a “I can play DVD’s in a pretty interface until I get internet and can replace it with VLC” software

On most decent Linux OS’s..it is simply a matter of opening the DVD app (and following directions) or a quick search (you’d have to anyway when your windows box neglected to come with the softwar) on the net to find out what package manager and app to install (sudo apt-get “this”)

By: slacker

slacker — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:11:43 +0000

I found this an interesting read as I use a very different method of getting multimedia and DVD’s working on ubuntu:
First add the Medibuntu repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

then add their gpg key:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

Finally remove the gstreamer backend for totem and add the xine backend + codecs and libdvdcss2
sudo apt-get remove totem-gstreamer && sudo apt-get install totem-xine w32codecs libdvdcss2

and bingo! all sorted. Simple, no?

By: Top 10 Things That You Need to Do After Installing Hardy Heron - Make Tech Easier

Thu, 15 May 2008 03:59:42 +0000

[...] What seems to be a simple task in Mac and Windows is almost impossible in Hardy without any configuration. Same as Gutsy and all previous version of Ubuntu, you still can’t watch DVD from your fresh install of the OS. For those who really can’t live without DVD, check out the installation guide here. [...]

By: Damien

Damien — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:30:36 +0000

@Punit: One of the package that is required is the libdvdread3 package. However, this package is not found in the repository. The command above is a script that download the libdvdread3 package and install in your system.

By: Punit

Punit — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:24:19 +0000

Thanks a lot…this helped…quite a few packages had to be insatalled…being an ubuntu newbie, i have this question..

what does this command do?

/usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

Thanks…

By: Govind

Govind — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:02:41 +0000

Hi Damien,

I checked it and it installed like the others. What should I look for next?

Thanks,

Govind

By: Damien Oh

Damien Oh — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:41:53 +0000

@Govind: Can you check your Synaptic if libxine1-ffmpeg is already installed? If not, install it and try again.

By: Govind

Govind — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:11:27 +0000

Hi Damien,

Hope you had a good easter. I just got back from holidays and now trying to work out this problem.

Thanks for the tip….I did what you said and I have successfully installed VLC but it does not play any DVDs. I insert them into the drive, open up VLC, then click on the disc that I want to play and nothing seems to happen.

I have checked using synaptic package manager if libdvdcss2 and libdvdread3 are installed and they are. The manager came up with a little green box next to the packages which I assume means they are installed.

I have tried playing DVDs using totem media player, xgine and VLC but nothing happens. It opens up the first 4-5 seconds (the copyright warning etc) and then it says I can not proceed further due to encryption problems. VLC does nothing.

Can you give me any further tips? I am a beginner and not sure what to do next.

Many thanks.

Govind

By: Damien Oh

Damien Oh — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:14:49 +0000

@Govind: Look like you never enable the universe repository. Go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package manager. Under Setting->Repository->Ubuntu Software, make sure that the “Community maintained Open Source software (Universe)” and “Software restricted by copyright and legal issues( multiverse)” are checked. When you close the window, the Synaptic package manager will prompt you to update your repository. click Ok and wait. Once it is done, reinstall vlc again.

By: Govind

Govind — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:51:21 +0000

Hi,

I followed everything in your instructions but for some reason I could not install vlc. I have just installed gutsy if you need to know that.

I came up with the following error report when I typed the command for installing vlc. Can you help?

govind@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install vlc
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
vlc: Depends: vlc-nox (= 0.8.6.release.c-0ubuntu5.1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libsdl-image1.2 (>= 1.2.5) but it is not installable
Depends: ttf-dejavu but it is not installable
E: Broken packages
govind@ubuntu:~$

By: Damien Oh

Damien Oh — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:30:01 +0000

Linux does support dvd playback and has its own dvd handling standard. The only reason why it is not included in the distro is because of licensing and legal issue. As long as Linux (especially Ubuntu) remains an open source OS, this will always remain an issue.

By: kaneda26

kaneda26 — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:22:20 +0000

If linux is ever going to replace osx or windows, popular distros, such as ubuntu, really should come with dvd playing capabilities as standard. I understand that xp doesn’t come with this standard, but you can’t buy a dvd playing app at the computer store, and the average joe doesn’t understand what a terminal is or how it is to be used.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:16:30 +0000

are you sure its this complicated!!
i installed gutsy a couple of months back and I’ve never had to use the terminal to watch a DVD, actually I’ve only used a terminal once maybe twice but i cant remember what for