Disney DVD doesn't work on Ubuntu

Question

My son just received a "Disney Junior" DVD as a birthday present. It won't play in Ubuntu - in fact, Ubuntu only sees an empty disc! This is on 2 separate computers at home running Ubuntu 13.x and 14.x, respectively. The player is VLC but the built-in media player doesn't see any content either.

I loaded the DVD in a Windows computer and it plays just fine there, using VLC. I tried using handbrake to make a backup of it but Handbrake doesn't see any content.

Is it normal that Ubuntu can't play Disney DVDs? How can I get around this?

I'd like to rip the DVD to my harddisk; that's how we view all our other DVD's. Failing that, I'd at least want to be able to play the DVD on Ubuntu...

Is this a simple video or does it have some sort of software on it too? — TRiG, Oct 02 '14 at 18:08
Encrypted? Aha, so that's the cause! That wasn't obvious to me. In this case, close-as-dupe seems right. — Torben Gundtofte-Bruun, Oct 03 '14 at 08:42

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 02 '14 at 18:24

As Xangua said, you need to download libdvdcss to play some restricted dvds. First, you need to install it:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

After that, do this:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

You might need to reboot it to get it to work. Click the link below for more help/info about this:

RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs

Disney DVD doesn't work on Ubuntu

1 Answers1