Hi Tptworks, and welcome to TSG.

Unless the DVD player's manufacturer requires or recommends installing any specific player app, an app like VLC Player may work for you.

https://chromeready.com/1531/watch-dvds-chromebook/

 

I was able to download the VLC player OK, but the chrome book is not recognizing the external DVD player.

 

recognize an external DVD

What errors are you getting?
What are you trying to do with the external DVD Player ?
Does this article help External drives on ChromeBook

 

Did you read the article in the link PeterOz posted?

You can't play music CDs or DVD videos with a Chromebook DVD drive....ChromeOS does not support optical disks to let you play music or movies. The primary reason for this is that Chrome OS doesn't come with codecs. Codecs are necessary to compress and decompress large files like DVD videos.

Since you downloaded VLC, I assume you wished to play an audio or video DVD which won't work.

One article implies you can use an external optical drive to play music and movies while the other implies it can only be used for data.
The article that says you can tells you to put the DVD into the drive before you attach it to the Chromebook. Have you tried that?

Have you tried a data DVD? Does it work?

 

What are the manufacturers and exact model numbers of the Chrome book and DVD drive?
What release of Chrome are you running?