only root can open the display for mplayer
 

i am using
MPlayer dev-CVS-050106-10:30-3.2.2 (C) 2000-2005 MPlayer Team

the problem is if i play any video file, then i cannot see any video. i can just hear the audio.
if i play the file as root, then i can see both the video and listen to the audio as well.
how do i fix this so that users other than root can also see the video.

mplayer has about 15 different ways of showing an image... care to tell us whih way you're trying? the actual console output would be a start.

If I had to guess, my guess would be that you have a permissions problem with mplayer. Recompile as a NORMAL user and then install as root, do not compile AND install as root. See if this makes a difference.

what video out driver are you using? some, like dga or vesa need root privileges to run. try mplayer -vo x11 <filename> and see if your user can see the video.

sorry for not replying sooner, i was out of town.

mplayer -vo x11
does not help. it says ..
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

i don't know about 15 different ways of showing images.
i just use,
mplayer <filename>
which works fine for root, but not for others. i just hear the audio.

I see that you use Red Hat. Did you install Mplayer from .rpm or compile it from source?
If you compiled it from source, you will need to do the "make install" as user not as root, like shaitand said.
Sounds like a permissions problem.
Post the output of

The $ means as user not as root #
It plays the audio, but there will be an error why it is not playing the video.