Linux DVD player for Copy Protected DVDs

[TomCooksey]

First, I'm not trying to "backup" my DVDs, I just want to play the ones I've paid good money for from Amazon, HMV or Virgin.

I've been getting more and more frustrated recently when trying to play DVDs under linux. I use Kaffine (xine back end), ogle and mplayer.

With more recent DVDs, playback success is patchy at best and is getting worse. Most of the time, Kaffine will simply crash or fail to load completely, so I switch to mplayer. That will sometimes work, but more and more it will bomb out or crash after about 5 minutes of playback.

I think the problem is DVD copy protection. Yesterday I bought 5 new DVDs from virgin, can't get any of them to play. All of them have a little "copy protected" symbol on the back.

I have 2 questions:

1) Is this a copy protection problem?
2) What Linux player will play Copy Protected DVDs?

I've searched through the FAQ on this forum and not seen anything.

Please help, I only have Linux on my PC and no TV+DVD player.

[nm]

Try VLC. I've heard it handles at least some of the ARccOS or RipGuard -mangled discs. If that doesn't help, you could rip the DVD with some of the Windows tools (under Wine, this has been discussed on this forum), or try something like this: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112720

[M7S]

Xine has worked best for me, but it hasn't been a 100 % success rate.

[TomCooksey]

I guess xine fails on about 80% of the DVDs I've bought in the few years. I've just tried VCL on 3 DVDs both xine & mplayer failed on and it's worked on all three! Excellent program, thanks for the tip!