I've plugged a new monitor into my computer and while everything else display related works just fine, when I try and play a video (any video) the software crashes (this is true of Movie Player, Mplayer and VLC) I'm guessing it has something to do with the new monitor?

I'm running Ubuntu 9.04, kernal 2.6.28-19-generic, Gnome 2.26.1
The monitor is a ViewSonic Professional Series P815 and my VGA controller information is below

VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. ProSavage KM133 (rev 03)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8041
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at ef000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Expansion ROM at efff0000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: savagefb

Any help appreciated, thanks!

You seem to be using 'ancient' stuff (both videocard and monitor)
May we assume that you did not have the problem with the previous monitor?
Are you using the same resolution as with your previous monitor; if not, try that first.
How much video memory does your card have?
What happens when the software crashes?

I don't think it has something to do with the monitor as that is basically a passive device; I think that you're running into limitations of your system.

By 'crash' I mean the programme closes without any messages popping up or anything. Here's the output when I run VLC the command line:

x11 video output error: X11 request 132.19 failed with error code 11:
BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
X Error of failed request: BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 132 (XVideo)
Minor opcode of failed request: 19 ()
Serial number of failed request: 81
Current serial number in output stream: 82

It might be running out of RAM, maybe the resolution is too high ? or you're demanding too much from it.