DVD : no medium found on /dev/sr0 when there is a DVD

I have a problem with Ubuntu 14.04 and playing DVD's.

After installing 14.04 I came to the conclusion that I can not play any DVD's. DVD's cannot even be opened as they are not seen by Ubuntu.

The data I have until now:

• In the install of 13.10 this was no problem, so this excludes a hardware problem
• It's on 2 installs on 2 different computers.
• It concerns a Ubuntu and Lubuntu install
• The different libdvd libraries are installed:
  • libdvdread4 : version 4.2.1-2ubuntu1
  • libdvdnav4 : version 4.2.1-3
  • libdvdcss2 : version 1.2.13-0
  • ubuntu-restricted-extras : version 60
  • acidrip : version 0.14-0.2ubuntu7
• The dvd is found on /dev/sr0
• eject /dev/sr0 does work like a charm
• sudo mount /dev/sr0 /tmp/dvd makes DVD to in but doesn't mount
• The dvd is found on /dev/sr0
• lshw on cdrom gives the DVD player with the <status=nodisc> when there is a dvd in it!
• playing a CD is no problem

• ls -l /dev/sr0 gives :

  brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11, 0 aug 9 20:20 /dev/sr0

  • I am in group cdrom
• vlc doesn't work as doesn't acidrip for that matter or mplayer
• changing regions doesn't work as the computer thinks there's no disc.
• vlc doesn't have problems with encyption (region) but just can't open /dev/sr0
• when using vlc as root it gives the same error, so it won't be a rights problem

vlc -vvv /dev/sr0 gives a lot and this:

libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 4.2.1
libdvdread: Could not open /dev/sr0 with libdvdcss.
libdvdread: Can't open /dev/sr0 for reading
libdvdnav: vm: failed to open/read the DVD
[0x7f1d18000e78] dvdnav demux warning: cannot open DVD (/dev/sr0)

So now I am stuck with two installs of Ubuntu 14.04 which don't play any DVD's. Can somebody help and/or ask some questions which lead me to an answer?

Solution 1:

Try cleaning your DVD drive optical head. I had some flaky DVD recognition, similar symptoms, which got much better after cleaning the laser lens.

Solution 2:

Did you try running sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh ?

It is a " shell script to install libdvdcss under Debian GNU Linux, many DVDs use css for encryption. To play these discs, a special library is needed to decode them, libdvdcss. Due to legal problems, Debian and most Linux distibutions cannot distribute libdvdcss "

This script will also install VLC if necessary

I do read that you have libdvdcss2 installed already, but in my experience I had to run this script before I could play DVD's.