System will not play DVD's.

[somavirex]

The system will not play DVD's - I can read data DVD's, play .avi files, and burn DVD's, but payback is not working.

When I attempt playback I get this from MPlayer (fatal error):
Error opening/initializing the selevted video_out(-vo) device.

I'm running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu.

If you need more info, please let me know. I appreciate any help!!
Also, I'm very new (2 days) to Ubuntu, so please excuse my ignorance...

Thanks!

~jaime

P.S. The system is a Compaq Presario V5210US laptop.

[dougfractal]

You might need to install some software to read comercial DVD's
There are legal reasons why Linux doesn't distribute it by default.
One method is this

sudo "echo activate sudo"

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y --force-yes install medibuntu-keyring
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libdvdread3 libdvdcss2 vlc

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

vlc is an excellent media player.