Reading up on the forum, I've noticed a lot of people having issues with mpalyer, especially on redhat.
Unfortunately, I'm going to add to that.

I've tried installing mplayer both from rpm (with apt) and source, and both times it produces the same errors.

MPlayer 0.91-3.2.2 (C) 2000-2003 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Willamette (Family: 8, Stepping: 10)
Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2

Reading config file /usr/local/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf: No such file or directory
Reading config file /home/nsong/.mplayer/config
[cfg] read config file: /home/nsong/.mplayer/gui.conf
Reading config file /home/nsong/.mplayer/gui.conf
[nsong@x-factor nsong]$ vo: X11 running at 1280x1024 with depth 24 and 32 bpp (":0.0" => local display)
Reading /home/nsong/.mplayer/codecs.conf: can't open '/home/nsong/.mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Reading /usr/local/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: can't open '/usr/local/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Using built-in default codecs.conf
Font /home/nsong/.mplayer/font/font.desc loaded successfully! (206 chars)
Linux RTC init error in ioctl (rtc_irqp_set 1024): Permission denied
Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your system startup
scripts.
Using usleep() timing
Can't open input config file /home/nsong/.mplayer/input.conf: No such file or directory
Can't open input config file /usr/local/etc/mplayer/input.conf: No such file or
directory
Falling back on default (hardcoded) input config
Setting up LIRC support...
mplayer: could not open config file
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to read LIRC config file ~/.lircrc.
You will not be able to use your remote control.
SKIN dir 1: '/home/nsong/.mplayer/Skin'
SKIN dir 2: '/usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin'

Again, any help would be appreciated.

-NS

ok......I assume you are using the apt rpm from freshrpms for redhat 9...

I assume the apt-get program is working properly?

First at the command prompt as root type apt-get update.......this causes apt-get to update its list of packages on the server available for download

then type(as root)

apt-get install mplayer

and you should have it

what error...? nothing techinially wrong with any of that....

I installed MPlayer on: Redhat 9.0 compaq Presario 2500 and really had no problems at all, other than having to tweak sound card a little. Maybe you should read the README a couple more times.

Never mind. Apparently, the reason why it wasn't working was that I was trying to run mplayer in the background (i.e., gmplayer &) and apparently either the gui or gnome didn't like that.

One more thing:
I compiled mplayer using the --with-xvidcore in ./configure, but the output showed this:

Checking for Xvid ...... no.

Looking in GMplayer preferences in the codecs tab, xvid isn't there, but win32, realplay, quicktime, and all the others are.

??????

-NS

I went through this over the weekend.

In your home directory should be a config file. If you gedit (edit) this file it says "#Write your options here"

I put two:

gui=yes
skin=phony (or whatever skin you have downloaded)

then I created a launcher using the mplayer *not gmplayer* command and everything loaded correctly.

I hope this helps.