Can't Play DVD's in a CDRW/DVD ROM

[tturner]

Running KDE 2010 Final and can't seem to get the DVD ROM to recognize or mount DVD Movies. The drive mounts fine for data and audio CD's but device notifier never sees a DVD movie when it's put in the drive. I've installed
libdvdcss2
libdvdnav4
Libdvdread3
Libdvdread4
Win32-codecs-all
and also the task-multimedia from Synaptic but nothing changed. I've tried using Dragon Player, VLC, SMplayer, and nothing sees it. I'm probably missing something simple but I've been through the forums and just can't seem to find an answer. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[Krisbee]

VLC, SMplayer etc have options to select the drives used. If the default setting doesn't work you may need to change this. In SMplayer it's under Options -> Perferences -> Drives.

But I would first check your optical drive(s) permissions, groups, links etc. What's the output of these CLI commands?

1. ls -l /dev/cd*
2. ls -l /dev/dv*
3. ls -l /dev/sr*

Double check your user group membership at the CLI with

4. groups

[Xero]

Have you tried any other media players, such as VLC ? What brand/model is the offending drive? Have you tried manually opening a DVD thru a media player? If so,what has been the result?

[tturner]

I've tried selecting the drives in the various apps and as I said, the drive itself is fine and works perfect for music and data CD's. It will not recognize a DVD movie or a DVD data disk that I've used on other machines. PCC sees the drive as follows:
Mount point: /media/cdrom
Device: sr0
Name: HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4482B
Type: auto
Options: umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,ro,exec

Here's the output also requested by Krisbee:
tige@BoysPCLinuxOS ~]$ ls -l /dev/cd*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-04-22 17:18 /dev/cdrom -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-04-22 17:18 /dev/cdrw -> sr0
[tige@BoysPCLinuxOS ~]$ ls -l /dev/dv*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-04-22 17:18 /dev/dvd -> sr0
[tige@BoysPCLinuxOS ~]$ ls -l /dev/sr*
brwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11, 0 2010-04-22 17:18 /dev/sr0
[tige@BoysPCLinuxOS ~]$ groups
tige lp floppy cdrom cdwriter audio video dialout users polkituser
[tige@BoysPCLinuxOS ~]$

Other other thoughts are appreciated.....

[Xero]

 One small detail i discoverd some months ago might be of interest. This laptop I am typing this from right no, the DVD drive cannot  read cd's, it chokes trying to, keeps trying and fails, and a friend of mine (who specialises in optical media) explained to me that most are unaware DVD optical drives have 2 lasers, one for cd, one for dvd, and the reason my cds were not reading was likely the cd laser was failing. Attempts to clan it made no diff, plus this revelation did explain a lot. It is always possible you maybe suffering from the same/opposite thing. Hardware issue. Just a thought.

[Texstar]

One small detail i discoverd some months ago might be of interest. This laptop I am typing this from right no, the DVD drive cannot  read cd's, it chokes trying to, keeps trying and fails, and a friend of mine (who specialises in optical media) explained to me that most are unaware DVD optical drives have 2 lasers, one for cd, one for dvd, and the reason my cds were not reading was likely the cd laser was failing. Attempts to clan it made no diff, plus this revelation did explain a lot. It is always possible you maybe suffering from the same/opposite thing. Hardware issue. Just a thought.

That is exactly what happened to me. It would read cd but not dvd. I replaced it now with a sata cd/dvd.

[tturner]

Makes sense guys. I think you're right. Everything just works too well with the CD and the DVD is like it's just dead. Didn't realize about the two different lasers. This is my kids computer and so they can probably do without the DVD portion until I can replace it. I'll try a clean first anyway. Thanks again and Tex this 2010 version is great. I've been a user since 2007 and converted my 5 kids and wife over about a year later. This forum has a lot to do with my success. Thanks again. 

[nerdful1]

I have a few drives that either permanently or intermittently will not read either one of cd or dvd.

A couple with flat out failures, will never read a dvd or cd but will read others, and a couple that will work ok weeks at a time then stop reading the one type of media again.

[Krisbee]

The answer to all those q's shows your software config seems fine in 2010,  so it does seem a hardware fault is quite possible.  You could try cleaning your optical drive to see if that brings it to life.