I've heard of xine and mplayer but are there any other contenders? What would you recommend for general use (e.g. some streaming video but mainly MP3 and movie playing)?

cheers,

james.

is there something like that? i would take xmms for mp3s and mplayer for video, i like this combination

yeah, you're quite right - forget the MP3 part of the question!!

mplayer does it all, MP3, movie, streaming.. And has a decent gui to boot.

However, you might also wanna look at the video plugin for xmms, or you can try some of the projects like Freevo.

Cool

I have been having good experiences with xine and .mpg's

just my $.02

Xine... ... I hate Xine.
But that's my opinion.

XMMS for audio.
MPlayer for video.

Sure, there are some things I dislike about Xine, but all in all I found it to be a pretty decent program. What don't you like? Just curious. Plus it might help the original poster decide.

good call, I was going to ask him to elaborate...

The biggest reason I hate Xine:
It claims to be all 'newbie friendly' but was completely the opposite for me. The configuration screen was anything but, it expected me to know quite a bit of 'linux knowledge' (assuming the default configs don't work..). However with Mplayer I was able to read through the amazingly overdone documentation and figure out how to do just about everything under the sun (Did you know Mplayer makes toast? j/k almost not though...). Xine was a huge pain in navigation, it's a video player, not a freakin OS. I prefer:
mplayer /path/to/file.avi
OR
mplayer -dvd 1
I don't want a big fat freakin gui suckin a bunch of resources away from my system all in an attempt to be cool. I don't want 10 thousand skins around my movie detracting from it. I want pure solid video. I want audio with a quick touch to fast foward skip a song. I want something so versatile and so fast and solid that it represents everything linux has proven itself to become. I want Mplayer, not Mickey Mouse player.

I mean, all the other crap is simply... details.

Cool

Xine had a tendency to lock-up on my system when it got to the end of a video file.
I had to kill it on many occasions.

Although I was using the verison that came with RedHat 7.3,
so this problem may no longer be an issue in newer versions.

In the end, this should not stop you from trying it.
I encouraged you to find and use the software that you like.

fair enough. I have not used mplayer, I guess I'll check it out.

With xine though I have clicked on mpgs and it launches and plays. I dig that, but I am down with faster/lighter as well.

Oh. I have only used it with RH9.

Right on.

IMO this is one of the best things about linux and GNU licensed software - choice I can try Xine *and* mplayer and only then decide which one to keep long-term.

it's amazing.

thanks for all the comments too!

cheers

james

Wow, re-reading my post I sound like a salesman or something

Yeah, definitely give em both a try. Xine is decent as a media player when it works. If that means 'always' then you'll surely like it

Cool

xmms for mp3s and mplayer for video ...
very nice combination

Vincent