[mythtv-users] Many new dvd's not working

[jedi]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 09:40:10AM +0000, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> On 11 December 2010 22:17, jedi <jedi at mishnet.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 09:22:35AM -0800, Neil Salstrom wrote:
> >> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 5:28 AM, James Courtier-Dutton
> >> <james.dutton at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Have you tried playing it in "xine".
> >> >
> >> > If you start xine with "xine --verbose dvd://" it will give more
> >> > information as to what it happening.
> >> > If the DVD works in xine but not in myth then it is a bug in myth.
> >> > If it fails in both xine and myth, then there is some new DVD feature
> >> > that open source does not support yet.
> >> >
> >> > Kind Regards
> >> >
> >> > James
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > mythtv-users mailing list
> >> > mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> >> > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> >> >
> >>
> >> I did not try using xine but playing from DVD in VLC worked flawlessly.
> >
> >    I suspect that VLC treats the disc more as a conventional console DVD
> > player would. My usual rip methodology didn't work on that disk (mplayer
> > with the dumpstream option), so I just went straight for AnyDVD. Disney
> > disks in general seem to be more problematic and Pixar is now a part of
> > the mousey beast.
> >
> >    I also see more trouble with ABC DVDs too (that Disney connection again).
> >
> >    I have very little trouble with any other DVDs.
> 
> I wrote quite a lot of the dvdnav code for Linux. VLC, Myth, mplayer
> all use the same lib for DVD playing.
> I do not understand what "treats the disc more as a conventional
> console DVD player would" means.

    VLC actually goes through the menus on the DVD. It follows the same 
path navigating the DVD as a console would rather than trying to treat it
as a piece of generic random access storage.     

> Whether one is playing the DVD normally, or extracting the main title
> from it, the functions required from dvdnav are identical.

    Knowing what is the main title (or titles) is not always obvious. This
is one of the things that they do with DVDs now to make them less usable with
PC tools. Something like lsdvd will give you a lot of bogus information. OTOH
you can use VLC to navigate the DVD menus manually and see where it leads you
and what the real title numbers are.

> One feature that has not been implemented in dvdnav yet is error-correcting.
> If dvdnav see a sector error on the DVD is exits.

    A lot of intentional errors are put on disks these days. Although you
still have the occasional problem of a disk that is genuinely broken due to
wear or just bad manufacturing. 

    dd_rescue can sort some of those disks out.