Since installing Ubuntu 12.04 shortly after it was released, XBMC has been unable to play .iso files. This has been the case for me, and for my friend who has a similar setup. I’ve found a way to overcome this.
By way of background, we both have a central shared MySQL database on an Ubuntu 12.04 instance, shared with multiple other XBMC instances running on different platforms. The XBMC instance I mostly watch happens to be Mac OS/X, and that has continued to work. In his case, the “living room” instance that he watches is the same Ubuntu box which houses the database. That XBMC instance is unable to play .iso files. My Ubuntu instance is also unable to play .iso files, though since I rarely watch on that instance it was not a big issue for me. He on the other hand was having to watch movies in another room on a Windows XBMC instance in order to be able to play the .iso files. We are both set up to share the files from the central repository with NFS. Over time we’ve experimented with different protocols, but mostly NFS and SMB, and at the moment we are set up with NFS. Continue reading XBMC Dvdplayer on Ubuntu 12.04