Friday, May 18, 2007

DVD Player fun and games

And then there was light... but the light wouldn't play the dvd due to some issues.

My Inspiron 630m just doesn't want to play nice with the world, I suppose. No biggie, I've got my sound, widescreen external monitor, usb keyboard and mouse all working, so I can get this working.

The issue was a few fold:
  • Totem Player (and mplayer) weren't able to access /dev/dvd
    • /dev/dvd was a shortcut with "root root" permissions, that pointed to a device with "root cdrom" permissions... hmm... the learning from the audio issue!
    • I added my user to the cdrom group, just to be sure
  • Next, Totem read the obligatory warning from the DVD, then spouted an error!
    • I researched the error and found that the DVD was likely encrypted and required the libdvdcss2 and w32codecs packages installed
    • I tried "sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs", but got an error saying the package wasn't available.. hmm
    • I googled for a bit and found
      http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2005/12/04/libdvdcss2-and-w32codecs-for-ubuntu/
    • But then... I got an error saying another package had a conflict. I had to remove mplayer and the reported package, but then I could install the packages successfully
I plugged in a DVD, Donovan's Reef, and it played Beautifully!!! I was so excited! It was playing! Then I realized my mistake... now I can play DVDs on my linux box... so now I have to fight my wife for my linux box... ah shucks!

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