Ubuntu – Unable to play commercial DVDs

dvdsoftware-recommendation

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

Best Answer

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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