In and Installed

I'm going to put this in big bold letters so you remember - and more importantly, so that I remember it.
OEM Hardware Does Not Come with ANYTHING!!!
We will call that Rule #1 of Building a Computer. So DJay (that is, me), remember the next time you buy anything that is appended with letters standing for Original Equipment Manufacturer that it is up to you (meaning me) to find the cables, the mounting screws, the software and the drivers to make it run. Which is what ultimately decided that my new DVD burner was going to be a swap job instead of an add-on.
The actual physical installation was a snap. I was half-afraid I would have to go in and remove the power supply in order to get the thing in. I was saved from that hassle by popping off the case's plastic front cover and sliding it out the front. I have very little good to say about Compaq (though I'm a bit kinder to them since they were bought by HP), but their cases were well-made.
So out goes the old, semi-functioning CD-RW drive and in pops the DVD burner. I fire up the Windows side, pop in a DVD (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, if you were wondering) and am promptly reminded of Rule #1. And it's corollory: if it's an upgrade, the software to use it won't be on the system restore disc.
To quote from the Windows Media Player website[1]: By default, Windows does not include a DVD decoder. "Not a big deal," I think as I follow the provided link; "I'll just download the decoder and call it good." MS offered three links for DVD playback on their WMP site: Roxio, CyberLink, and InterVideo. Get DVD playback capabilites added for $15.00.
And I thought for a second, and I decided I'd go with VLC. This free (as in Libre) video player can handle DVD natively. It can also handle pulling the video from the DVD but that's a whole other story. Only one problem, the VLC isn't a plugin, and so I have to run VLC instead of WMP, but that's not a big deal. A quick change to the context menu (changing the default action for DVDs to Open with VLC) and we're good to go. A quick press of the play button and I'm hearing the strains of So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. Grab the universal drivers for the Lightscribe system (which uses the DVD burner's laser to engrave a label on the top of the disc) and I'm done on that side.
Now, over to the Linux side. Again, less trouble than I was expecting. Ubuntu recognized the drive as a burner, and recognized the DVD that was in it.[2] Again, I run into the same problems as on the Windows side; neither Kaffeine nor Totem could read the disc, complaining it was encrypted and that I lacked the necessary library. Totem went ahead and told me which one I needed, but couldn't tell me where to find it. By that time, it was time for me to go to work, so I've done some research. I found the driver necessary, and have installed it (I love being able to use SSH to log in at home). Now, just to be on the safe side, I haven't played it, and won't until I get home. Chel may not appreciate a DVD going off behind her back for no apparent reason (I still haven't figured out how to route the sound through the remote computer's speakers. Oh well.). We'll see if it worked first thing in the morning.


[1] MS Play CD or DVD FAQ
[2] Or, at least, the fact it was a DVD, and the volume label.