DVD Playback Issue [Solved]

[dwh367]

Since this is my first post I guess a little background would be in order.  I come from back in the DOS days and have built and repaired computers for family and friends.  I also ran a Wildcat! BBS many moons ago.  I would rate my technical abilities as advanced but that's in the Microsoft world.  This Linux thing is a whole new ballgame for me, 

I have 4 old laptops laying around that either run Windows XP or Windows Vista.  I would like to convert them over to Linux to give them a new life.  My test subject is an Acer Aspire One AO751h that used to belong to one of my daughters.  After installing SparkyLinux it had some some hiccups with audio and video but I was able to iron those out through research. 

I'm now to the point now where I could use a little help.  I have researched this problem too but none of the suggested remedies have worked for me.  I'm on my 3rd day of trying to fix it on my own and my patience is finally starting to wear thin.

Now and then I like to take a laptop out to our deck of an evening and relax with a beer and a movie as I enjoy the outdoors.  This PC doesn't have a built in CD/DVD drive so I have it networked to the BluRay drive on a Windows 10 machine.  It works great except for when I try to watch a commercial DVD. Then it just sits there and does nothing.  I know it's codec problem but as I mentioned earlier I haven't had any success in getting any of the workarounds to function.  Once I get that working this Linux machine should do everything that I want it to.

I'd be grateful if someone could walk me through the steps of being able to to play commercial DVDs as maybe something just didn't install right somewhere.

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UNABLE TO FIND C:\COLDBEER.CAN USER NOT LOADED! 

[dwh367]

I set up VLC on the Windows machine to stream to VLC on the Linux machine.  This method worked for me.  However when I shut both streams down I could still play the DVD directly as long as I didn't change DVDs.  Once I did that I had to initiate the VLC streaming again to get it to play again.  Therefore it doesn't seem to be a codec problem after all.  It seems to be related to accessing the shared DVD drive when trying to play a commercial DVD.  This isn't an issue when playing a non copywrited DVD,  Anyone have any ideas about what might be going on with it? 

[pavroo]

Check do you have the two packages installed: 'libdvdread4' and 'libdvd-pkg'.

[Wombat]

Hi dwh367

Just wondering why you haven't saved your DVD's to a hard drive to make them more accessible to your sparky laptops?

Decoding tools such as Handbrake and simply viewing via VLC just as a media player over the network (Samba) is our preferred method.

[dwh367]

Check do you have the two packages installed: 'libdvdread4' and 'libdvd-pkg'.

Hi Pavroo. Yes it is.

[dwh367]

Hi dwh367

Just wondering why you haven't saved your DVD's to a hard drive to make them more accessible to your sparky laptops?

Decoding tools such as Handbrake and simply viewing via VLC just as a media player over the network (Samba) is our preferred method.

Hi Wombat:  Thanks for the advice.  I might end up having to do it that way as when I did get the streaming to work, from VLC Player to VLC Player, the audio was flawless but the video was horrible. It would only move a frame or so about once every 10 seconds.  That's probably due to the specs on this machine or lack thereof.  I'm still going to try to figure out how to get to get it to work, without using VLC on both sides, for a little while longer though.  Even if the playback continues to be unusable at least maybe I'll learn something that I can use later down the line on a more powerful machine.

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Beam Me Up Scotty.  A 2X4 Sir?   

[dwh367]

I have marked this thread as solved as I'm moving on to a different Linux distro. I'm not sure which component is responsible but when it updates it partially wipes out my desktop.  The bottom menus disappear and I can't navigate anywhere forcing me to do a reinstall.  I've already reinstalled it 3 times and it just did it a fourth time so I'm done.  A lot of other things wouldn't work out of the box that now work with the new distro that I'm trying out so I seriously doubt I'll be coming back to Sparky anytime soon.  It doesn't seem to be very newbie friendly.  Thanks again for your help Wombat and Pavroo.  You all are a lot more experienced than me so I hope this distro continues to work well for you.