It's beginning to look BAD

Being equipped with the internet, a printer, and e-mail I decided to try to fix some of the problems I encountered with the hardware. First on the list was to fix the DVD player. I went to Source Forge and browsed through the multimedia section under video. I found a good looking application called Xine that claimed to play all kinds of DVD, VCD, and other video files. I clicked the "Download" button where I was taken to a screen with 6 files on it. I downloaded each of the six files and extracted them. Again I was at a loss. At least this one had an install text file that gave directions for installing the file so I tried to follow along.

I opened the terminal, changed directories to the folder the file was in and typed the first command in the instructions. I promptly got an error message stating that I had no valid C compiler. I checked the FAQ but to no avail so I fell back on looking in the Synaptic Package Manager.

Armed with the knowledge of what program I was looking for I quickly found it in the multimedia section. I checked Gxine and applied it then waited for it to download and install the package. When it was done, gxine was one of the options in my Applications / Sound & Video.

I put in the store bought DVD and it promptly crashed the application. I got a blank error box which I had to force quit. I tried the home-made DVD and it worked like a charm except that Totem Movie Player comes up and gives me an error saying it can't play DVDs every time I put one in the DVD player.

I tried a second store bought DVD. It too causes Xine to crash. Looks like I still need to find a DVD player that works.