[plug] DVD players

[John Knight]

There are four main contenders, xine, MPlayer, Ogle and Videolan. xine is 
the most mature (it was the original) and the one I would recommend the 
most. It's not only a DVD player, but a CD player, live webcast player, mp3, 
video player, etc.

xinehq.de

MPlayer is a video player that *happens* to play DVDs. MPlayer has no menus, 
so you have to manually choose what video/audio/subtitle stream or chapter 
you want to use and it's a bit more hardcore than other players. MPlayer 
should be installed anyway, as it's an invaluable tool, and arguably the 
best player for general video files under Linux. Plus it can encode files 
and rip DVDs.

mplayerhq.hu

Ogle is a lightweight DVD player that supports menus and subtitles etc, but 
it's not particularly stable and doesn't have  avdanced options like 
video-deinterlacing (for things shot on video to stop the 'liney' effect). 
Good for slower machines or quick and easy access.

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/

VideoLan is a two part package, but all you need is the client. It's a 
player that's designed around a server PC streaming out a  DVD/video file 
and the client machines all watching it from the streaming server. Videolan 
certainly has its fans and it aims at a niche area like MPlayer and Ogle, 
worth a try, but I'd still recommend xine over it.


videolan.org (i think)


xine supports de-interlacing and changing audio streams all on the fly, plus 
surround sound support and a host of other features. I'd recommend using 
xine together with its standard UI and compiling them from source, with the 
latest ALSA 1.0 drivers. .deb packages are okay and most pluggers seem to 
not notice the difference (it's come up before), but when it comes to 
intensive playback and error free, completely smooth DVD playback, source is 
the only way to go as it's fully optimised for your system.

.deb packages for all of these proggies are avaialable on the official 
websites of each project if you'd prefer to go that way. xine comes in two 
parts, the xine-lib and you then pick a UI for the top, the default is best 
for most people. MPlayer do not support the binary packages and would prefer 
you built from source. IF you need help with it, my article went up today at 
linux.com (shameless plug coming):

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/01/1940236

cheers!
John


>Hi all,
>
>Just a quick question to those who follow the multimedia scene on Linux-
>what is the best DVD player these days and where can I get .deb's for
>it? There are plenty of comparisons on the web, but mostly they are out
>of date due to the rapid rate of development that is going on in this
>area.
>
>Thanks,
>Tim

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