converting

Both xine and MPlayer can play DVDs directly, but xine has a DVD navigation. In Mplayer you need to specify which movie (VOB file) you want to play:
xine dvd:// mplayer dvd://3 If you just want to temporarily store the DVD on your hard disk it might be sufficient to create a DVD image:
dd if=/dev/dvd of=rosenstrasse.iso The image can be mounted as follows:
sudo mount -o loop rosenstrasse.iso /media/temp/ Xine can play a DVD from an iso image directly (without mouting the image):