Here's why Xine won't play your DVD's

[Nu-Bee]

It seems that the Xine people, along with the other DVD player people in Linux are paranoid of the DVD encryption scheme. Even though the Windows programs like PowerDVD, WinDVD, etc. will play your DVD's just fine, the Linux programs won't do that as they are lacking the files to decode most of your DVD's.

In order to get true DVD playing in Linux programs like Xine, Mplayer, etc....it is going to be necessary to hunt down and install those files.

Even though you have paid for the right to view those DVD's, the laws are (deliberately, I believe) written ambiguously to scare off competition...under the pretense that it discourages illegal DVD's or something.

Duh!

That is why Xine won't play your DVD's.

That is why groups like the Penguin Liberation Front (PLF) (search for it) exist.

So, now you know why.

BTW, when I say "paranoid" I mean it in the sense that it's a load of bull.

Here's the story:

The DeCSS Gallery (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/)

You'll have to find the libraries you need...but it isn't too hard.

I write this so that people, like I was, who are confused about why their DVD player won't work...will have a clue.

"The Truth" is out there. :)

...and here it is:

Playing DVD's with Xine in Linux - The Truth. (http://www.trylinuxSD.com/dvd/)

[mrBen]

Erm, it's not because they are paranois, it's because the decryption software libraries that you need to play DVDs under Linux, called DeCSS, are illegal, and thus people distributing stuff can be arrested for doing so.

You are supposed to pay lots of money to big corporations to right a DVD decoder, and then you distribute that cost when you ship your product. Given that most Linux DVD software (xine, mplayer, ogle) is free, this is not possible. Nor has a big corporation paid the money for it to be legal. So until then it is safer for them to distribute without, and leave you to find the stuff for yourselves.

The law sux.

[The Ennead IX]

Something I noticed when I updated to rc2 the other day is that Gentoo now includes the libdvdcss library (http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/pkgs/media-libs/libdvdcss.xml) as part of the available packages. Whether or not this is a change of heart solely by Gentoo or whether other distros have done the same I don't know, but i'm sure it wasn't included the last time I installed.

[Hayl]

Debian doesn't include it but they give you a script that downloads it and installs it :)

[retoon]

I installed Mandrake 8.2 standard, and it came with xine. Its playing my dvds for me.

[bandwidth_pig]

Thanks for posting this info. Answered a lot of my questions!