problem playing video DVD

Fri Feb 27 05:29:06 UTC 2015

Rented a DVD movie (the 3rd in the series Atlas Shrugged).
It would not play with any media player (such as smplayer, vlc, Dragon 
Player, xine, totem, ... etc)

No errors in /var/log/messages.

I told the vendor, and they stuck it into a machine the "tests" it for 
playability.
It took 5 seconds and it declared it playable :) :)  Whatever ....
The surface seemed OK on visual inspection.
So, what could have gone wrong?
Anyone have this problem?