best/favorite/easiest to use DVD player..

[bruce]

hi...

i have a possible project that's going to require that i get into the world
of dvd. i'd need to be able to play around with/create/play dvd media
files...

initial research on google seems to give a number of open source apps for
playing dvds (xine/mplayer). are there associated open source tools for
editing the underlying dvd files...

so, my questions:
 what's the easiest tool to use to get started looking/playing around with
dvd files on FC3?
 are there "open source" test dvd files that I can use to test/play with?
 ideally, I want to be able to take a test dvd file, add some information to
it, play the file, see the results of the 'information add' operation

any thoughts/etc... would be helpful and appreciated.

thanks

bruce
bedouglas(a)earthlink.net