I’m very happy to say that I’ve got dvds to work in Ubuntu! I’m documenting what I did so that if I need it again it’s here or it may help someone else.

edit /etc/apt/sources.list and put in the following lines:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sarge main
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sarge main

Even though these lines are for Debian Sarge it still works in Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog 5.04

then do these:
apt-get update
apt-get install libdvdcss2

Now Totem works with the dvds I’ve tried so far.