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I run Ubuntu 8.10 and many DVDs won't play for me and I don't know why. Is there more software that I need to install outside the default install? Neither Totem or Mplayer will play the DVDs.

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3 Answers

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This is well documented on the Ubuntu wiki.

Ubuntu 8.10 (i386, amd64)

Install the libdvdread3 package (no need to add third party repositories) via Synaptic or command line: 

sudo apt-get install libdvdread3 gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly

Then open a terminal window and execute: 

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

See the wiki pages for other Ubuntu versions.

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Just for the record, if you're using Jaunty then you want libdvdread4 rather than libdvdread3. – humble coffee Aug 15 '09 at 5:03
Dan said he's using 8.10, and the second link mentions libdvdread4 for Ubuntu 9.04, jaunty. – jtimberman Aug 18 '09 at 14:07
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up vote 3 down vote

DVD are usually encrypted and therefore, due to legal reasons, Ubuntu Linux does not ship the package which decrypt DVD

In order to be able to play encrypted DVDs, we need to install *libdvdcss2 /libdvdread4 * package

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up vote 1 down vote

You could just install vlc - that normally works fine for me.

Alternatively you can use the medibuntu packages, though it is possible they may not be legal in the country you live in. Here are full instructions for using medibuntu. For playing DVDs, the key package is libdvdcss2.

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