After several weeks of trying and Googling, I finally got DVD movies to play on my Ubuntu box! Like some crazy voodoo, I’m not entirely sure what incantation finally got things to work, but so that others may benefit, I record it here.
Initially I had Xine-ui, totem-xine, and libdvdcss installed and I thought that was all that I needed. But whenever I tried to play one of my movie DVDs, Xine and totem would act as if they couldn’t even find libdvdcss at all.
Thinking that there was something wrong with the movie players, I decided to try VLC. That didn’t work for me either, but that may have been because I couldn’t figure out how to start it, duh. Before figuring that out I took a look at the Ubuntu Wiki’s Restricted Formats page. On that page I found more information and a link to the w32 codecs. Since I run into a lot of Windows format media files, I figured these codecs would be useful.
After installing the w32 codecs, lo and behold, I could play DVD movies in Xine and Totem! At this point I didn’t even try to figure out VLC because I was happy to finally get what I wanted!
From the above, I’m guessing that I needed both libdvdcss and w32codecs to make it all work, which had not at all been clear from everything else I had read previously, again duh. But I also wonder if VLC brought something extra to the party that sealed the deal. Eventually I may do some experimenting to find out, but for now I’ve got one more Revolutionary Girl Utena disc to finish watching!