virtualbox.org

I've installed Lumbutu 14 in two different Windows 8.1 Upgrade hosts, along with Guest Additions, libdvdcss2, and regionset. The latter says that both of my virtual DVD drives do not have a region set. I only set one for passthough as advocated in some articles and manuals. Doing so allowed me to supposedly set the region, although that did not help. VLC and a couple of other apps still can't read the movie data. Before I waste even more time, can someone please tell me if they have this working? BTW, all unencrypted media plays just fine.

I'm not positive but I believe regions are set in firmware. In other words, if you can't play the DVD's on your host, you won't be able to override the region in a guest. At least not that I'm aware of.

I play the encrypted DVD's on the host just fine, but it's a Windows 8.1 Update host, not Linux.

That has to mean no region is set in Windows and probably why regionset said there was no region set. I'm not aware of any other file aside from libdvdcss2 for VLC to help. You might want to check the Ubuntu forums to see if people are having issues playing certain DVDs. I don't think it's a VirtualBox issue.

if you haven't seen this page already maybe it will help... https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Restr ... layingDVDs

You don't want to be setting regions in a passthrough drive: you'll be affecting the physical host drive, and mfrs typically only allow the region code to be set a limited number of times.

If you don't have a passthrough drive then region coding is probably irrelevant: I don't believe the standard virtual drive will even work as a DVD-Video drive.

mpack wrote:I don't believe the standard virtual drive will even work as a DVD-Video drive.

Jim Karam wrote:BTW, all unencrypted media plays just fine.

Apparently it works somewhat.

If it's just a data DVD then of course you can read media from it. In that case it's just another drive attached to the VM, no different from an ISO image. What I meant is what I said, i.e. that the virtual drive will not work as a DVD-Video drive, e.g. firmware storage and testing of region coding and anything else such a drive requires. Such features require passthrough mode.

Similarly, the virtual drive will not work as a CD-Audio drive.

loukingjr wrote:if you haven't seen this page already maybe it will help...

Thanks, but been there, done that. That's how I got this far, but no cigar.

I looked at the OP's first post in a different way. I believed he was saying he could play unencrypted DVDs, i.e. ones he or someone else made. On the page I posted, when you run Linux as the host OS, you may not be able to play encrypted videos unless you disable the menus. From the first troubleshooting tips...

DVD still not playable

There's a chance that even after installing libdvdcss, some of your DVD's still won't play. One solution is to play the DVD with a media player that allows you to disable DVD menus. In VLC Media Player for example, when you choose to open a disc, there's an option "No DVD menus". You just have to enable that option before you press Play.

You could be absolutely correct of course and seeing I have all new Macs I have no CD?DVD drives to test with.

Jim Karam wrote:

loukingjr wrote:if you haven't seen this page already maybe it will help...

Thanks, but been there, done that. That's how I got this far, but no cigar.

Sorry to hear. Since mpack mentioned it, have you tried playing a music CD in the guest?

Playing a CD-A would be even harder than a DVD-V, since the former predates the ISO filesystem. The history of optical storage is CD-A >>> CD-ROM (and writeable variants - and introduction of ISO filesystem) >>> DVD-V (derived from CD-ROM) and finally >>> DVD-ROM (and writeable variants), and of course later HD variants.

loukingjr wrote:

Jim Karam wrote:

loukingjr wrote:if you haven't seen this page already maybe it will help...

Thanks, but been there, done that. That's how I got this far, but no cigar.

Sorry to hear. Since mpack mentioned it, have you tried playing a music CD in the guest?

Yes, audio CD's play fine. BTW, non-encrypted video DVD's also play fine. It's just the protected Hollywood movies that I can't play.

Jim Karam wrote:Yes, audio CD's play fine.

I assume you mean in passthrough mode, for reasons alread given.

okay, here's what I found out after hooking up a 2011 iMac I still have with a CD/DVD drive.

first of all, a DVD movie copy a friend of mine made for me a couple years ago plays fine in a Lubuntu guest in VLC. I don't know what was stripped out. DRM maybe.
Second, a retail exercise DVD will play audio only with the video basically scrambled using VLC with no menus enabled all though you can still select different chapters in the VLC menu.

passthrough was disabled.

It makes me wonder whether a native Linux machine will play copy protected DVDs much less in a guest. And no, I'm not going to buy a new PC and install Linux on it just to find out.