Installing a DVD decoder in Ubuntu?

[Elliot B.]

None of the media players I have installed will play a commercial movie DVD.

Can anyone help?

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

You probably need libdvdcss2 or libdvdcss3 (I can't remember which one)

Go here and read the Playing Encrypted DVDs section.

[FlibbyFlobby]

As Alex above said, you need to look at Medibuntu. If its Gusty Gubbon then run these 3 commands in the terminal:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

Your DVD should then play in Movie Player after that (I think).

[Elliot B.]

If the Ubuntu Foundation want Ubuntu to be used by general consumers, this will need to be made easier. A large majority of general consumers will want to be able to play DVDs.

[MrFuji]

^Sadly libdvdcss2 is illegal in many countries.

Unencrypted DVD's can be easily played in Ubuntu, though - without adding the medibuntu repository...

[GatorV]

Also it goes against the "free software" filosophy of ubuntu, althought if you want a all-in-one package you can try another distro like Ubuntu Ultimate, or Linux Mint, these are based of ubuntu, but contains the codecs that are normally "restricted" in the stand alone version.

[Borbus]

  King Mustard said:

If the Ubuntu Foundation want Ubuntu to be used by general consumers, this will need to be made easier. A large majority of general consumers will want to be able to play DVDs.

They can't. It is illegal in the US and UK to play encrypted DVDs on Ubuntu. People need to stop blaming Linux distributions like Ubuntu and start blaming the film industry, Sony (because Blu-rays have to be encrpyted, no option) and even themselves for being ignorant enough to spend money on something that they cannot legally use.

[Elliot B.]

  Borbus said:

They can't. It is illegal in the US and UK to play encrypted DVDs on Ubuntu. People need to stop blaming Linux distributions like Ubuntu and start blaming the film industry, Sony (because Blu-rays have to be encrpyted, no option) and even themselves for being ignorant enough to spend money on something that they cannot legally use.

I'm not blaming them for not having a DVD decoder installed, I'm blaming them for not making it clearer to the end-user the reasons for this instead of displaying an error message.

[GatorV]

If you type help dvd in the help system you can see all the info needed. Read: https://help.ubuntu.com/7.10/musicvideophot....html#video-dvd

[markwolfe Veteran]

  GatorV said:

If you type help dvd in the help system you can see all the info needed. Read: https://help.ubuntu.com/7.10/musicvideophot....html#video-dvd

Neowin's auto-parsing of a FTP or HTTPS link is broken. Try this

http://help.ubuntu.com/7.10/musicvideophot....html#video-dvd

[FlibbyFlobby]

  Borbus said:

They can't. It is illegal in the US and UK to play encrypted DVDs on Ubuntu.

I was under the impression in America it's considered illegal because of the DCMA, and libdvdcss2 being considered as circumvention of encryption. I certainly don't know of any such laws in the UK. I'd love some actual clarification on this.

[simsie]

According to Wiki it is legal in the US:

  Quote

Unlike DeCSS, libdvdcss has never been fought over in a courtroom, in part because Section 1201(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act authorizes such circumvention for purposes of software interoperability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libdvdcss