I installed mythbuntu on an old PC (p4 1.7GHz, 1GB ram, intel video)
It looks nice. I figured out how to import a xvid movie and it looks fine.
but I can't play a dvd. I put a dvd in and hit play and the screen "blinks" then comes back to the menu.
I thought it might be CSS so I burned a DVD so it would have no copy protection and it still won't play.

I tried playing it from mplayer and mplayer says I don't have a dvd player installed. Maybe I need to create a symbolic link or something to my dvd drive?

any help is appreciated!

BTW I can browse to the vob files and play them with VLC fine.

Exit the frontend and then open a term windo and run mythfrontend for it. try to play a DVD, then exit and look at the error messages. Those would help. I don't play dvd's very often. I do know I had to install libdvdcss. But the error messages should give someone a starting point to the problem.

hmmm it says can't stat /dev/dvd
so i'm guessing I need to make a symbolic link from /media/cdrom0 to /dev/dvd

I'm VERY rusty on my linux commands, i'm off to Google but if anyone has advice i'm open to it.

ln -s /media/cdrom0 /dev/dvd

worked fine.
dvd playback was jerky (no css to deal with) I wonder why when a xvid file played smooth.

graphics is crappy old intel 915 I think but i'd think it could do mpeg2.

Try "-cache 8192" (or more) and/or "-framedrop" in mplayer.