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I've been directed here from another forum. Looking for help! First, I'm based in the UK. My boyfriend (who lives overseas) installed Ubuntu on my laptop a while back because he hates Windows and thought I'd prefer using Ubuntu. I mainly use my laptop for surfing the net so wasn't bothered what was on it and it's been fine up until now.

Anyway, I just borrowed a DVD from the library and it's not playing. I have VLC media installed already but nothing seems to be working. Googling revealed that it might be an encryption issue to stop people copying DVDs but there are ways round it including using libdvdcss2 but that it might not be legal.

I've also been told that it might be a dvd region thing that means I can't play the dvd. But I have no idea what region this dvd is.

Can anyone help please? Otherwise I'll need to take the DVD round to my parents' house to watch a movie that I should be able to just stick in a machine and press play to enjoy :(

Thanks.

TechNOphobe
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    Depending on the actual errors you are getting there is a chance that the proper DVD software is not installed. See: https://askubuntu.com/a/1013303/231142 which should install the required software for allowing DVDs to be played. – Terrance Jun 29 '18 at 22:29

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Assuming you have a recent version of Ubuntu, it's pretty easy to install the required software.

Just open a terminal window and type:

sudo apt install libdvd-pkg

Type your password when prompted (there will be no feedback), accept the default answers to any text mode prompts you get by using the tab and enter keys. When it completes, type

sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg

Accept the default answers to any text mode prompts you get by using the tab and enter keys.

Then reboot (not totally sure this is required but it won't hurt) and your DVDs should play.

pomsky
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Organic Marble
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  • libdvd-pkg only supplies the libdvdcss-dev and libdvdcss2. – Terrance Jun 29 '18 at 23:37
  • Thanks for the info, that's all I ever had to install. What else is needed, ubuntu-restricted-extras? I always install that with the system. – Organic Marble Jun 29 '18 at 23:44
  • libdvdnav4 for navigating the directory structure and libdvdread4 for reading the discs. I have had to install these before for applications like VLC. I think libdvdread4 was optional. ubuntu-restricted-extras was purely optional. – Terrance Jun 29 '18 at 23:47
  • Wonder why I didn't have to do that? Interesting. – Organic Marble Jun 29 '18 at 23:48
  • I use 16.04 and I've needed it. Plus I use Xfce4 (Xubuntu) which may not include certain apps by default. – Terrance Jun 29 '18 at 23:49