[Solved] DVD recognised but not recognised

[MinimalRisk]

G'day. I'm trying to setup an old laptop to play DVDs in the bedroom on an old plasma tv. It was running too slow on Win7, so I installed Cinnamon 20.3 thinking it would run faster. I installed via a burnt dvd, and have it connected to the tv no problem via hdmi. Trouble is, nothing I've done will make a video DVD play. I've run "sudo apt-get install libdvd-pkg" and it seemed to install everything fine but nothing happens when I run VLC or Celluloid. I then saw about regionset, so I installed that without a problem but when I run "sudo regionset" it brings up a "null" and tells me to put a valid cd or dvd in the drive. To make sure the drive is still valid, I put in a data dvd and it read it perfectly fine, and when I check in VLC its looking at dev/sr0 so that seems fine as well.

I'd be pulling my hair out if I had any left, so here I am begging for help. Does anyone have any clue what is going on, and how I can fix it?

[deepakdeshp]

Mint xfce is much lighter on resources than Cinnamon.

Code: Select all

 inxi -Fxz

Run the command in putting output in code tags.
Your dvd media or the drive may be bad, in which case nothing can be done in software level.
https://www.howtocleanstuff.net/how-to- ... ork%20well)-,Steps%20to%20Clean%20the%20Drive%3A,use%20as%20little%20as%20needed.

[MinimalRisk]

Mint xfce is much lighter on resources than Cinnamon.

[snipped]

Thanks for the tip about Xfce. I might have to switch to that...if I stick with linux.

As for whether it's hardware or software. I was thinking it might be hardware related but if that were the case then it should affect data DVDs as well. This was not the case when it installed Linux on the system, and it easily recognised a data DVD *and* played some audio files and video files. It is only video DVDs that are affected, and I've tried a number of different ones--mostly region 4 discs but also a region 1, and a region 2 disc. It is clearly a software issue.

[absque fenestris]

Even in Cinnamon. Commercial, factory-made, and copy-protected DVDs run on my device. For viewing I use Celluloid, more rarely VLC.
With the search "dvd" the Synaptic Package Manager returned the following information:

Code: Select all

dvd+rw-tools 
suite makes it possible to burn DVD images created by
dvdauthor or genisoimage to DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW disks,
 
 
genisoimage 
is a pre-mastering program for creating ISO-9660 CD-ROM
filesystem images, which can then be written to CD or DVD media using


growisofs 
is a general purpose DVD recording program that supports:


liba52-0.7.4
library for decoding ATSC A/52 streams


libdca0
decoding library for DTS Coherent Acoustics streams


libdvdcss2
Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runtime libraries


libdvdnav4
DVD navigation library



libdvdread7
library for reading DVDs



libmediainfo0v5
library for reading metadata from media files -- shared library


libvlc-bin
tools for VLC's base library


libvlc5


libvlccore9
base library for VLC and its modules


vlc
multimedia player and streamer library


vlc-plugins

[all41]

Did you install the multimedia codec package mentioned at your Welcome screen under First Steps?

[MinimalRisk]

Yeah, so it turns out the damn drive won't even recognise a video DVD in Win 7. Not sure what the issue is exactly but it is clearly something to do with the hardware because when I hooked up a 3.5" dvd drive via USB, it played a video DVD no problem. Both drives do recognise, and can access, a DATA DVD without a problem, so it has nothing to do with the laser or cleanliness of the drive itself.

Thank you to everyone that contributed an answer. Sorry to have wasted your time.

[absque fenestris]

For CDs and DVDs, the copy protection could also play a role.
For example, I have a few "official" Music-CDs that I could never play on the HiFi CD player... the copies of them, on the other hand, worked.

[ajgreeny]

After installing the libdvd.pkg did you run the configuration command to go one step further and install libdvdcss?

Without doing that final step commercial DVDs still will not play.

[all41]

drive won't even recognise a video DVD in Win 7

Mostly older cd/dvd drive issues are mechanical in nature.
Try this: open the drawer, put in a dvd, and just as the drawer closes give it
an extra nudge. Sometimes older drives do not complete the loading cycle.

If this added effort loads and reads the disc then you can bet the drive has a
stretched loading belt.
See here:
viewtopic.php?p=1104253#p1104253

[MinimalRisk]

All the appropriate software and drivers were loaded fully and correctly.

It was pointed out elsewhere that some older drives might have a problem with dual layer disks. To test this theory, I inserted a single layer movie DVD disk and lo & behold it loaded perfectly in VLC--including with menus. Even though this Philips Lite-on drive was manufactured in 2009, it seems it can't handle dual layer movie DVDs. I don't know whether this is a manufacturing limitation, or a fault in this particular drive because I can't find any information about it but the fact it played a single layer disk leaves me with the assumption it has something to do with the way the disk "flips" to play the second layer. Whatever the case, I'm done with it.

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice.

[absque fenestris]

Now I'm at a loss: where did you find the information whether the DVD is single or dual layer?

Have honestly never bothered... (and my Movie-DVDs including burner are currently in storage)