Linux Format forums

[PCNetSpec]

@ Bazza
When I said "not necessarily" we must have been posting at the same time... my response was to the posting above yours.

I still think it's hardware though...

AFAIK CSS stops content from being played, but the disk should still be mountable.

If the disk isn't mounted, how is libdvdcss supposed to mount it as a block device?
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[Rhakios]

Is this a new drive? Do the game discs have some sort of copy protection?

For new drives with more restrictive modern firmware, they often need to be region set before they will read copy protected discs. Normally under proprietary OSes when the drive is first used to play a DVD, the region is set by the player software. This doesn't happen under Linux. However, one can find region set utilities around the web.
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Bye, Rhakios

[Bazza]

Hi Rhakios...

Your upload is the way I was thinking. If you read my previous
upload I was thinking in terms of DRM.

As nicebloke`s drive can read commercial CDs then it steers
my mind away from a HW problem to something more subtle.
Especially as it is commercial DVDs it is coughing at.

Although as a side note PCNetSpec`s misaligned head idea
does seem a plausable possibility, but IMHO probably not.

But hey, what do I know... ;oD
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[nicebloke]

I thought about regions before. I've tried region 1, 2 & 0 discs.

:~$ regionset /dev/sr0
regionset version 0.1 -- reads/sets region code on DVD drives
Current Region Code settings:
RPC Phase: II
type: SET
vendor resets available: 4
user controlled changes resets available: 4
drive plays discs from region(s): 2, mask=0xFD

Would you like to change the region setting of your drive? [y/n]:

[Rhakios]

Well, as it looks like the region is already set (to 2) you can forget my post.
It could still be a firmware problem, rather than specifically hardware or software, but to the extent that it isn't easily fixable, it might as well be a hardware problem.
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Bye, Rhakios

[nicebloke]

Hi Rhakios, it as worth a guess. I have the latest firmware on the drive. I'm starting to think the drive is broken in some way. I never watch DVD movies on the PC, so I've had the drive for well over a year - I just wanted to check a particular scene in a film - and I found I couldn't read the disc.

I'll have access to another drive and a cleaning disc tomorrow, so I'm guessing there is nothing further I can check tonight.

[nicebloke]

Ok, I'm starting to think its defiantly hardware. I just found an old DVD I burned a few years ago on a different drive and it fails to read that too

[PCNetSpec]

It *could* be something as simple as dust/grit stopping the read head traversing all the way to the centre of the disk... although unlikely if it will play retail CD's.
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[wyliecoyoteuk]

At home now, experimented with it, and the messages that you receive are indeed a failure to recognise the medium.
If I put an LXF DVD in for example, and try to read it with VLC, I get the same messages, but otherwise, it works.

So that would look like a hardware problem.
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[nicebloke]

Ok, here's a curious thing. I came back to my PC after about an hour and VLC was running with the title menu of the old copied DVD I had in the drive (Airplane! in case it matters). How did that happen?

I thought I do a quick look in /dev and got the following:

:/dev$ ls -la | grep sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-08-17 21:02 cdrom4 -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-08-17 21:02 cdrw4 -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-08-17 21:02 dvd4 -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-08-17 21:02 dvdrw4 -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2010-08-17 21:02 scd0 -> sr0
brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11, 0 2010-08-17 21:02 sr0

Does it matter that I don't have a /dev/dvd or /dev/cdrom ?

[PCNetSpec]

I can't say for sure, *but* both those are present on my Mint 9 systems (based on Unbuntu 10.04), both are symbolic links to /dev/sr0

But I doubt if this would stop *only* retail DVD's from being mounted.
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[nelz]

It can't be a DRM problem if the discs cannot even be mounted. You can mount an encrypted DVD without libdvddecss present, you just can't make sense of the contents of the files.

I agree with PCNetSpec, if you can only read DVDs written on the drive, it sounds like the drive is out of alignment.
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[ScannerDarkly]

Don't know if I'm too late posting here, but it is a hardware problem. I have the exact same issues on my Toshiba laptop drive. It can pretty much do everything apart from read software, games, or DVDs -- just like yours.

This is not a software issue, as it used to. I have to keep an XP partition around for VB development and it can't read them either. I would suggest you try and find a replacement drive that fits, although I'll warn you that if it's a laptop you'll have to take off the keyboard to undo the optical drive screw underneath. I'm currently using an IDE->USB adapter and an old desktop DVD drive. I'm sure you could find cheaper, better solutions!

EDIT: I don't know if you'd be able to fix the drive at all, a replacement seems like the only option.
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