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I recently wanted to play a commercial DVD in my computer's built in DVD drive. So I the inserted Faulty Towers DVD into my DVD drive, and then told it to launch it in Videos, and it just gave me this:

Install extra multimedia plugins

But I remember that when I tried to install these plugins in the past, even though the installation was successful, the DVD still does not play. I have already looked at this question and its answers, and they do not help: Why does my optical drive not play commercial dvds?

I know that there is some software which somebody once told me about which allows you to play commercial DVDs on Ubuntu, but I cannot remember the name. So does anybody know either the name of this software, or another way round this issue?


OS Information:

Description:    Ubuntu 15.04
Release:    15.04
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  • possible duplicate of Why does my optical drive not play commercial dvds?
    – Pilot6
    May 20, 2015 at 16:38
  • @Pilot6: No it's not! As I said in my question, that did not help me, so there's no point in closing it as duplicate!
    – user364819
    May 20, 2015 at 16:40
  • Sry for that, but that's all that unblocks encrypted disks. Did you install ubuntu-restricted-extras? There are some more codecs, supporting encryption too.
    – Pilot6
    May 20, 2015 at 16:43
  • @Pilot6: I've tried that already, but it did not work.
    – user364819
    May 20, 2015 at 16:44
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    @NGRhodes: Ahh! No, it wasn't, that fixed it! Thanks! Could you please convert that into an answer so that I can accept it. :)
    – user364819
    May 25, 2015 at 11:27

2 Answers 2

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There are a few things you need to do to play DVDs in Ubuntu. First you need to install restricted extras:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Next you need to install libdvdread:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Finally you need to execute it:

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

Some Media Players won't automatically update with the ability to play DVDs. I would recommend installing VLC (if you haven't already), and using it to watch DVDs.

sudo apt-get install vlc
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Another thing to check is that your region is set correctly on your DVD drive.
From Setting DVD Region Codes:

If your DVD player regularly locks up when you try to play back a DVD, your DVD player probably does not match the DVD's region code. Region codes are a form of vendor lock-in. For example, you cannot play a DVD published in Japan (Region 2) on a DVD player in the United States (Region 1) without changing the region code of the DVD player (unless you own a region-free DVD player). You can view or modify the region code of your DVD drive with the regionset tool.

You can install the regionset utility from universe with the following command:

 sudo apt-get install regionset

Then to set the region, insert a DVD from the region you want to use and run the following command (replace sr0 with the name of your DVD drive if different):

sudo regionset /dev/sr0

Note there is a 5 change limit (usually).
Also note most players will ignore the region set (and some drives come without any set region). Further details see Setting DVD Region Codes.

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  • Why is there a limit of how many times you can change it? And is there any way to circumvent this limit?
    – user364819
    May 25, 2015 at 17:44

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