My Totem will play DVD's (I think I did install something) but there's
a problem with it crashing or closing when I click on certain things.
Can't remember the specifics, as I stopped using it for DVD's
because of it.

Point is, I use VLC on my Ubuntu machine for DVD's and it's great, no
problems. Only occasionally I'll get a little bleed-through of the
desktop in the letter boxed areas (full screen mode). But it's easily
fixed with a quick rotation of the cube. Not sure what causes that,
but it's only occasionally.