Member Avatar for peter_budo

I have VLC running on my laptop which does happily plays CDs and movies on the local disk. However I'm not able to play DVDs.

In the Preferences under Input & Codecs Settings where default disk device can be set I'm getting 2 question marks in diamond shape and the browse button next to text field doesn't respond. I have distinct feeling that Ubuntu is not picking my DVD driver correctly and misplacing it with CD drive.

Suggestion how to solve this issue?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Stefano Mtangoo

Dani AI

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Most likely cause: commercial DVDs are encrypted and Ubuntu 9.10 does not include the decryption libraries by default. VLC will play local files but cannot open CSS‑encrypted discs until the DVD libraries are installed and the drive is recognized. The MacBook Pro 5.3 hardware is fine as observed; the Perian/QuickTime suggestion from that post applies to OS X only and won’t help on Ubuntu.

Basic troubleshooting checklist and commands that were not shown in the thread:

  • Confirm the kernel sees the optical drive and the device node:

    dmesg | tail -n 50
ls -l /dev/dvd /dev/cdrom /dev/sr0 /dev/hdc

    If /dev/dvd is missing but /dev/sr0 exists, create a safe symlink so programs looking for /dev/dvd work.

  • Reset VLC preferences if the GUI shows garbage or the browse button is dead (corrupt config can break dialogs):

    mv ~/.vlc ~/.vlc.backup 2>/dev/null
mv ~/.config/vlc ~/.config/vlc.backup 2>/dev/null

  • Install the DVD libraries and restricted codecs (legal status varies by country; libdvdcss may be restricted): update package lists, install the navigation/read libraries, then run the libdvdread install helper script that fetches the decrypter.

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libdvdread4 libdvdnav4 ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

  • Test and debug from a terminal to see errors:

    vlc -vv dvd:///dev/dvd

If playback still fails, check the DVD region with the regionset utility (changing region is limited to a few times) and inspect kernel logs for drive errors. and pointed to the Ubuntu multimedia docs — those are useful reference reads after confirming the device and trying the steps above.

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Member Avatar for Crash~Override

Actually can you make sure your cd drive is actually also a dvd drive? Look near the place where you click to eject the drive. If it says "DVD ROM" or "DVD R" or "DVD RW" than you should be to watch dvds.

Member Avatar for peter_budo

It MacBook Pro 5.3 so you can bet it has DVD drive

Member Avatar for Crash~Override

hmm have you tried contacting Apple and or asking on apple support site?
This seems to me like a hardware issue.

However try the perian codec for quicktime and try playing with quicktime.
http://www.perian.org/

Member Avatar for kaycee3x

Have you tried running update manager? It may be a small thing but some essential files may not be present to properly run VLC player. You might as well download Ubuntu 10.10 to be sure.

Member Avatar for Stefano Mtangoo

Check with docs, Peter!

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