Works fine for me. Did you install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package?
How about dvdcss?

Yea, I have the restricted package installed.
I checked on dvdcss... dont have that so Im looking for that one.

When I start VLC it at least shows the dvd but it wont start.

Oh well.

I'll look at mine when I get home.............

I installed ubuntu restricted extras and VLC and have no problems using
the puter for movies. Hope this helps

When I start Movie viewer and select the dvd, it immediately turns off.
If I select a movie on my drive, its okay.

When I have a chance I might try rebooting. Never needed to do that
with linux but, Ill try.

Tried a few more things like changing the output of VLC but nothing worked.

Something to try is to install totem-xine and remove totem-gstreamer.
Totem-gstreamer has trouble with displaying menus, but totem-xine is the fix
for this. This should not affect VLC though. I have also read about a GNOME
bug that affects playing DVDs. I always run two or more desktops in case one
messes up and I would try it in another desktop if this was my system. That
way you can try to localize the problem.

I'm not sure how rebooting would help - don't think that will be very
productive.

Time for basic questions: Does the user who wants to watch the movie
have rights to read the dvd device? (Does "use the cdrom device" appear
in their list of privileges?)

To put the question in concise short-hand, unix form, I'd ask "is the
user in the cdrom group?"

The package that you want is ubuntu-restricted-extras. It contains
libdvdcss2 which is the package required to decode commercial DVDs which
have copy protection on them. VLC is a great player, but it won't work with
commercial DVDs unless you have libdivdcss2 installed. The restricted-extras
also enable you to play flash and mp3s and includes ttf-mscorefonts which
makes Windows pages look more natural in Ubuntu.