Totem won't play DVDs "you may not have permission to open this file" (clean install)

Using Ubuntu 9.10, fully updated, without lbdvdread4 installed, when inserting a DVD Ubuntu complains "You may not have permission to open this file" on the very first try. Following attempts identify it appropriately as DVD and propose to open it with media player (Totem) - see attachment.

Once accepted, Totem opens but a black playback screen stays at the 0:00 mark, and the movie doesn't start. VLC won't play DVDs either at this point.

After installing libdvdread4 and running sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh, the player indicates "Playing 0:00 (Streaming)"but also fails to play the movie. VLC does play such movies at this point.

Starting Totem from command line and choosing Movie > Play Disc "DISC_TITLE" displays an error dialog (see attached):
"Totem cannot play this type of media (DVD) because it does not have the appropriate plugins to be able to read from the disc.
Please install the necessary plugins and restart Totem to be able to play this media." and a message
"More information about media plugins"
This message links to http://www.gnome.org/projects/totem/#codecs

On that link the gst-plugins-ugly is indicated as needed for DVD playback. gst-plugins-ugly is not available in karmic, however, it's called gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly, which was installed when this error dialog showed up. So it seems totem has the wrong check for this package to begin with.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Nov 22 08:00:38 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.25-2
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: gstreamer0.10
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2024): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:2024): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:2124): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2156): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed