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DVD Players

Issue 116

From Issue #116
December 2003

Dec 01, 2003  By Dave Phillips
 in
We compare features, convenience and performance of the leading DVD-playing software for Linux and cover some important tweaks for smooth playback.
Documentation and Support

Apparently none of the developers of the players reviewed ever wanted to be accused of supplying inadequate documentation. MPlayer, VideoLAN Client and xine supply especially extensive docs for developers and normal users. Ogle provides somewhat less exhaustive documentation, but it's also the most narrowly focused player reviewed, and its manual page (man ogle) is excellent. All of these players have extensive support available through highly active mail lists and list archives.

The Final Frame

The players reviewed all show remarkable longevity and maturity. Linux may not be an obvious first choice for a multimedia platform, but it's certainly becoming difficult to ignore the fact that it is rapidly evolving into a superb platform for audio and video play. I encourage readers to check out the software listed and reviewed here, and I look forward to receiving your reports. Have fun, but remember to try to get some real work done too.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to all the development teams working to bring a better DVD experience to Linux users everywhere. Thanks also to Siggi Langauf and Bill Fink for their assistance with xine and their astute criticism of my first drafts of this article. I am responsible for remaining inaccuracies and errors, and I welcome civil corrections and addenda.

Dave Phillips is a musician, teacher and writer living in Findlay, Ohio. He has been an active member of the Linux audio community since his first contact with Linux in 1995. He is the author of The Book of Linux Music & Sound, as well as numerous articles in Linux Journal.

______________________

Similis sum folio de quo ludunt venti.

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Things have changed

Jason's picture
Submitted by Jason (not verified) on Wed, 08/04/2010 - 10:36.

While this was a great article back when it was written, things have changed very much sense then. Installing DVD playback software is now much easier, and with a growing number of Distributions (Ubuntu for example) everything is pre-optimized for video and DVD playback. All the user needs to do is launch into the terminal and type the following (for Ubuntu)

$ sudo su
[password]
$ apt-get install libdvdread4 (this command is not required for 10.04 as 10 comes pre-loaded with libdvdread4. With mine it did anyways, not sure if thats the norm though.)
$ /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh (Installs libdvdcss2)
$ apt-get install vlc (Because the default video player in Ubuntu is a b**ch to get working with libdvdcss2... says you don't have it when you do).

And done. Watch DVDs to your hearts content.

Right you are. Infinitely

Dave Phillips's picture
Submitted by Dave Phillips on Wed, 08/04/2010 - 16:02.

Right you are. Infinitely easier than "back in the day". Oh well, at least there's some historical curiosity to the article. Thanks for the comment, Jason, I appreciate the read.

Best,

dp

Similis sum folio de quo ludunt venti.

i m a new user of fedora 8

bhupendra yadav's picture
Submitted by bhupendra yadav (not verified) on Thu, 09/24/2009 - 17:12.

i dont know that how softwares are instlled in linux and how we can use software that are inbuild . and how java,sql,c,c++ programs run in linux. plz give me any solvable solution

NEWBIE step-by-step compile tutorial.

Harding Leite's picture
Submitted by Harding Leite (not verified) on Sun, 11/26/2006 - 16:48.

Howdy...I'm trying to spend more and more time on the Linux "side" of my dual-boot PC but don't have enough mileage yet using the Terminal and the command-line to perform functions such as the ones demanded to get a DVD player up and running (i.e., Xine, Mplayer, etc).

Can anyone point me at a newbie-geared tutorial on how to compile sources? Can it be done from within KDE or must be using comands from the console?

I'm using OpenSuse 10.1.

Thanks!
Harding Leite
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

It works!

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 08/08/2006 - 11:25.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/movix/

It works!

Re: DVD Players

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 02/02/2004 - 03:00.

I just can't understand the hardware requirements for DVD playback. What is the claims about >1GHz processor etc?

I had RedHat9 with vanilla 2.4.20-8 kernel, 450MHz Celeron, 320MB of RAM, Matrox Millennium G550 videocard, TerraTec DMX XFire 1024(Only stereo playback), Eizo 17" TFT and Plextor PX-116A DVD-drive.
First I didn't do any "optimization" for DVD playback, just hit xine and movies are running very smoothly at full-screen (1280x1024x32bit). DVD-drive was also working with 16bit I/O and DMA disabled. CPU load is approx. 60%.

I didn't notice much difference w/ 32bit I/O and DMA enabled.

-rushi, Finland

My wife would love this,

Scott1202's picture
Submitted by Scott1202 (not verified) on Wed, 06/30/2010 - 05:41.

My wife would love this, right now she’s going to have twins in July and she is pretty big, it would be nice if she could lay on the bed and watch some dvd’s in our bedroom, great. thank you!

Re: DVD Players

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/28/2003 - 03:00.

Being new to Linux, I have been searching for a printed source of info on many things that have been vexing me. I found a source in your magazine ( the first one I have seen) which is the article on DVD players. I downloaded and compiled XINE, and after many tries I have finally got it to work. Somewhat. I still cannot get it to play many of my DVDs. I either get an error message, it locks up, or crashes. I have found that documentation for XINE, as well as many Linux programs, assumes that the user is a programmer. I would appreciate any help I could get on setting up XINE properly! I must say, I do not plan on ever going back to Windows and the daily, or more often, crashes that I suffered. Thank You for the article.
Michae Driver
daddy-d_rn@comcast.net

Re: DVD Players

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 11/29/2003 - 03:00.

Hi Michael: You should write directly to the people at xine and describe your troubles to them. Perhaps you should join the mail-list or search its archive, you might find some users have had the same particular problems. When sending a report be sure to detail whatever error messages or reports occur after xine crashes, the developers will need that info. To make a good report you should indicate the version you have; be aware that xine comes in two pieces, the UI (user interface) and the player engine, so hopefully you can let the developers know what versions of the pieces you have. Btw, I use xine daily, I've had no problems with any discs or files except for some recent WMV files. I'm even able to play DVDs with regional codes from other countries, something our standalone player won't do. I truly hope you're able to get it working better, it's a wonderful program.

Dave Phillips

Re: DVD Players

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/27/2003 - 03:00.

Great article! I was able to get the packages for xine, install them, and start watching my DVD's in under 30 minutes. I'm using SuSE 9.0 on an P-III/933Mhz, and it works flawlessly.
THANKS!

Re: DVD Players

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 11/17/2003 - 03:00.

can't seem to find the resources for this article

Re: DVD Players

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 03/02/2004 - 03:00.

Doncha love a new article with fresh borken links? Try this:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7174

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