Totem in my experience is fine for a lot of film DVDs. Ones with menus
wouldn't play for me... but they play fine on VLC. VLC seems a better
app to me - but i'm not that knowledgeable on media.

I delete totem as one of the first "musts" on a fresh install. I use
Kaffeine and VLC for video including dvd's

I can't get any of the media players to play DVD's on my 8.10 machine
either even, after downloading Ubuntu Restricted Extras. Is there now a
problem with DVD codecs within the US in Ubuntu?

No. There is no problem with restricted extras. You needs to install Totem-xine
if you want to use Totem or Mplayer, but VLC should work even if you don't have
Totem-xine installed. You can remove the regular Totem if you want.

Here's a thread that may be helpful. It suggests changing
system>preference>sound from auto detect to Alsa.

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+question/37103

Open Synaptic. Install Totem-xine. While there install VLC. It is better anyway.

Your problem is related to the fact that Totem uses Gstreamer by default as its
engine and it does not work as well for playing DVDs. when you switch to Xine as
the engine it works better.

VLC has its own engine and it just seems to work for everybody.