Installing a video player
 

I have tried everything under the sun to try and install some sort of media player. I was told to install YUM and it would install the downloaded RPMS and install the software. YUM installed fine but when I go to install Mplayer it starts out preparing to install then it a error window pops up saying that there is a unlocatable package. the package is mplayer-common. I found a RPM with that wording and downloaded it but to no avail. Does anyone have a clue on what I am doing wrong. I'm at my wits end and DO NOT want to go back to windows.
Any help would be appreciated
Sorry I'm using Redhat 9 at the moment

mplayer has to deal with some dependencies....

I'd suggest you to get Red-Carpet or Synaptic.

Compile the programs instead of using RPM files.

To compile
1) Untar or un-compress the file in to a directory. You can use file roller, ark, gnome archive if you want to use GUI. You can extract it in /tmp.
2) ./configure
3) make
4) Login as su and make install.

Though you need to have a copy of your kernel source code and a compiler to compile programs. Use the package installer and find kernel source code and compiler.

what you can do is to use apt to manage your packages
download apt for your distrib, then install it then update the package list (apt-get update) then install mplayer (apt-get install mplayer), it will take care of the dependencies and will do so for any app that you will install with it

apt is a maravellous app

use kickstart, it has mplayer and mozilla-mplayer plugin in its repositories, it is the best version of apt I have found for rh9 - makes everything very easy!

it's on my main page of my guide, link below

another possibility
 

Try VLC (video lan client)

http://www.videolan.org/

It's an amazing thing on linux and on windows, plays every conceiveable video format: (remember to download all the plugins from the site)
divx
divx XVID
divx Ac3 (sound)
VCD
DVD
MPEG

Check it out, maybe it will make you as happy as me.

I'd also suggest xine available xine.sf.net That's my favorite media player, but it's a royal pain to compile/install