I don't think it's too difficult to play DVDs on Linux, but you do need
to have programs that can decode the CSS encryption.  On my Debian box,
a dialog popped up when I installed the ogle movie player mentioning how
to obtain a decoding library.  I think the vlc player worked pretty much
out-of-the-box, but I needed to use some obscure utility to set the
region on my drive.

The Debian version of xine I have doesn't know how to play DVDs, but
that shouldn't be a problem if you compile from source, and there are
probably some libraries that you could download to remedy the situation.

I generally play movies and videos with a version of mplayer I compiled
from source.  The bonus with mplayer is that when you get all of the
Win32 libraries from it's website, you can play almost any file out
there, even streaming Windows Media, Quicktime, and Real video.  Some
packaged versions of mplayer are available through
http://marillat.free.fr/

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   "I'm going to KILL you." --
/ \/ \(_)| ' // ._\  / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__   Stewie, Family Guy
\_||_/|_||_|_\\___/  \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)  
[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]
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