VLC - does it play disks?

[David McKenna]

 I have an extensive collection of DVD and Blu-Ray video and music disks, but I can't seem to play the vast majority of them with VLC. Only DVD's of films made before WWII work - presumably not encrypted. Blu-Ray is not even recognized - maybe not supported on our platform? I'm wondering if anyone can use VLC to play an encrypted DVD or Blu-Ray disc?

 I reported this about 5 years ago to KoMH, but he said it worked for him... I've tried 5 or 6 different computers with OS/2 and none have worked for me yet. Maybe just bad luck?

Regards,

[Eugene Tucker]

Sorry Dave but it works for me as well.I did have a problem with it not running at all but now with Libidn.dll it works great.

[David McKenna]

Eugene,

 Glad it works for you... do you play DVD's or Blu-Ray or both? Do you have a video card or use the embedded video of your processor? Do you use SNAP or Panorama? I'm trying to figure out what is different about my setups and those that work.

Regards,

[Dave Yeo]

Hi David, Blu-ray won't work, our UDF driver is too old. My DVD player seems to be dying so can't test the latest build, but in the past it always worked. Perhaps move your %HOME%\.dvdcss directory out of the way if you have one.

[David McKenna]

Thanks Dave, I kinda thought that might be the case for Blu-Ray. There is no \Home\.dvdcss directory - maybe I'll try adding it. Do you have a video card, or use the embedded video in the processor? SNAP or Panorama? How about do you use OS2AHCI for the DVD drive? Looking for what may be different here...

Regards,

[Eugene Tucker]

David, I only p;ay CDs and I use Panorama with the video procesor on my AMD chip. I am running the setupp CSM as well.

[Dave Yeo]

Thanks Dave, I kinda thought that might be the case for Blu-Ray. There is no \Home\.dvdcss directory - maybe I'll try adding it. Do you have a video card, or use the embedded video in the processor? SNAP or Panorama? How about do you use OS2AHCI for the DVD drive? Looking for what may be different here...

Regards,

I've used both SNAP and Panorama using the embedded video and lately OS2AHCI for the DVD drive.
You could also test with MPlayer or better, Smplayer set to use MPlayer. It's Qt4, I have a newer build I've been meaning to test better and also tried building it with Qt5, the Qt5 one crashed.

[David McKenna]

Hey Dave,

 MPlayer doesn't work either with encrypted disks here, but unencrypted work fine (CD's and DVD's, not Blu-Ray). In VLC I get this message in the messages window when trying to open an encrypted DVD disc:

dvdnav info: DVD Title: SLAUGHTER
dvdnav info: DVD Serial Number: 306f9d55
dvdnav info: DVD Title (Alternative):
dvdnav info: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00fe0000. Regions: 01
dvdnav info: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
dvdnav info: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient

 and it sits forever (well, about an hour before I close it). It seems it doesn't get the 'CSS keys'. No idea where they come from...

 BTW - I'm using a newer version 3.0.20: https://github.com/komh/vlc-os2/releases/tag/3.0.20

Regards,

[Dave Yeo]

It is supposed to crack the CSS keys, it can take minutes. I see a reference to region 1, is your DVD player region locked and you're attempting to play a different region? Used to be a big thing, region locking. It's been a long time but it seems there were tricks to work around the region locking, though I think there were also limits. My computer DVD players have been region unlocked as far as I know.

[David McKenna]

 Dave,

 The player is region 1, as are all my disks. It was originally unlocked, and didn't work then either. KoMH suggested to change it to a region, but that obviously didn't help.

Regards,

[Andrew Stephenson]

[...] I see a reference to region 1, is your DVD player region locked and you're attempting to play a different region? Used to be a big thing, region locking. It's been a long time but it seems there were tricks to work around the region locking, though I think there were also limits. [...]

About 20 years ago, I was impressed by how I could buy Region 0 (ie, non-locked) disks from the US National Parks shops and play them at home on my UK m/c.  If they really have dumped that region nonsense, then (as folk used to say) good riddance to bad rubbish.

ISTR Apple m/cs (maybe other brands too) allowed a sequence of five region changes and stuck to the fifth.  But, as you say, reputedly there were fixes Out There In Naughty Land.

[Pete]

Hi All

Probably 1 of the best sites providing "fixes Out There In Naughty Land"  https://tdb.rpc1.org/

I must admit to having successfully used their firmware variants on many DVDRWs in the past  :-)


Regards

Pete