Playing InterActual DVDs Under Linux?

marat asks: "This Thursday our HMV store had (what I thought was) some kind of sale of well-know DVD titles starting from $5 a piece, however after I brought about $200 of them home I discovered that Kaffeine (xine frontend) refuses to play them. Closer inspection revealed small 'Please use with DVD video player' notice on each cover. More elaborate piece of paper enclosed -inside- stated that I have to download and install something called 'InterActual Player' if I want to watch this disk on the PC or Mac. The disks have the 'DVD video' symbol on them, and I don't have any other DVD player nor TV set at home, nor place to put it. Besides, I prefer my 19" monitor anyways. I didn't find the solution myself, that's why I'm asking the Slashdot crowd two questions: How can I play this stuff under Linux? What should I do if they refuse to accept opened cases back? (for semi-legal advice, please take into account that I'm in Tokyo)." "I've also learned that:"

• Linux is not even mentioned on their site
• It looks like this piece of software is not even free
• Some people believe it is spyware and, finally...
• There are numerous problems making it work."

Comments

just a stab in the dark

[Anonymous Coward]

But have you tried "mplayer" ?

Re:just a stab in the dark

[Zork the Almighty]

Since the poster uses KDE (or at least Kaffine), let me recommend KPlayer.

Don't know about interactual, but...

[Goeland86]

... Try ogle.
On gentoo emerge ogle-gui.
I've played Interactual dvds with it just fine.
I use it for every DVD, and it doesn't even as much as garble an error message for my Shrek dvd (interactual enabled!)
give that a shot and then email me if nothing seems to work.

Re:Don't know about interactual, but...

[max born]

I think parent is correct. I've heard you can play these on ogle. download here.

This sounds like a job for DVD Jon!

[thephotoman]

Really, what you need is the libdvdcss2 package, the piece of code that made DVD Jon famous. Install that, and you really should be able to play those DVDs in any player you want.

The easiest way to get them, from my experience, is to download and compile MPlayer from source, but if you use Debian or Ubuntu, it's apt-gettable.

Re:This sounds like a job for DVD Jon!

[MrResistor]

And if you use Suse, you can get it from Packman (be sure to also grab the win32codecs, which may not be listed under the dependencies).

Of course, if all else fails you could try running interactual under wine.

As these nice people have been pointing out...

[Firewheels]

The InterActual player has absolutely nothing to do with the DVD's content, other than to allow otherwise software-deprived windows users to view the disk. An InterActual DVD is just like any other css-disabled disk.

Spyware? Maybe. Annoying? Definately.

MPlayer, Ogle, Xine, all should work as long as they're built against libdvdcss or similar.

if nothing else works

[FlashBuster3000]

I've learned if nothing else works vlc will just work fine.
It's missing some usability but it has all the codecs built-in and it actually played everything i didn't get to work with others (on windows as well as linux).

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Here's what you do

[Kichigai Mentat]

...'Please use with DVD video player' notice on each cover. More elaborate piece of paper enclosed -inside- stated that I have to download and install something called 'InterActual Player' if I want to watch this disk on the PC or Mac. The disks have the 'DVD video' symbol on them...
Well, I'm assuming there's a "video_ts" directory on the disc, so it should be standard DVD spec. Just try MPlayer. It's played every DVD I've thrown at it, ever. You'll have to compile it from source, but it's worth it.

...What should I do if they refuse to accept opened cases back? (for semi-legal advice, please take into account that I'm in Tokyo)."
Well, I'm going to assume that Japan has similar laws to the US, as far as consumer protection. They cannot sell you something that isn't what it claims to be. I.E. if they sell you a Standard Definition TV, and the box says it's High Definition, you are allowed to return it. I'm also going to assume that this place allows you to return defective discs.

As far as I'm aware, the only discs that can legally bear the DVD Video logo are those that are true DVD spec. If these discs aren't DVD spec, then pretty much say that these discs aren't what they claim to be, or are defective.

• Linux is not even mentioned on their site

Yeah, they don't have any Linux support.

• It looks like this piece of software is not even free

It is free.

• Some people believe it is spyware and, finally...

It's not spyware, but it is hard to get rid of on Windows systems (pretty easy on Macs though)

• There are numerous problems making it work.

It is kinda buggy.

The InterActual player is just an over glorified DVD playing program, there's really very little about it that's special, and I can't think of a single reason you'd need it.

Fix your player

[Andy Dodd]

As others mentioned, pretty much any Linux-based DVD player will treat an InterActual disc like any other DVD if the player is set up properly.

I agree with the other posters that seem to think you haven't installed a CSS library.

In addition to the previously mentioned players, xine is my personal favorite.

It's no wonder their website doesn't mention Linux at all, considering there is only one 100% legal Linux DVD player, and you can only obtain it with one of two no-name commercial distros. (I forget which two...) That said, while libdvdcss isn't technically legal in the U.S., everyone uses it.

BTW, thank you DVD Jon! :)