[mythtv-users] DVD playback

[Brian Wood]

On Feb 17, 2006, at 3:32 PM, Thomas Baker wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I think someone has posted this problem before, but I did not see a
> solution.  When playing DVD's (in either mythtv or with a standalone
> player such as mplayer or xine) the DVD will play but then suddenly  
> cut
> out at some point in the middle.  The only error message in  
> mythfrontend
> is just the it's an end of file and it is exiting.  When using  
> Xine, it
> says "The source cannot be read.  Maybe you don't have enough  
> rights for
> this, or source doesn't contain data (e.g: not disk in drive). (Error
> reading NAV packet.)"  Some discs get farther than others but usually
> each disc has the same cutoff point. I have libdvdread and libdvdcss
> installed via yum.  Please help, my roomates are growing angry because
> they can't watch DVD's and I may be replaced with a roommate that is
> more M$ friendly.

It's possible you have a drive that has trouble reading double layer  
disks (DVD9). This is not to be confused with *writing* DL disks, but  
all players are supposed to be able to play them, and most commercial  
disks are dual-layer, so they can cram all of the "making of" and  
other non-program fillers onto them in order to induce you to buy  
again what you already have on VHS.

I read somewhere that some drives have trouble with the double layers  
though. If you can get a known single-layer disk (even if you have to  
just make one) then you could test for this possibility.

Other than that, the mechanism that moves the laser head might be  
sticking at a particular point,  causing a read error.

I assume you've done the usual cleaning etc.