For all of you that have had problems with Mplayer 1.0pre5 or other versions, I write this for newer Linux users having probs with winblows media files.
I just installed Mplayer 1.0pre6 and it works great!
It has played every .wma, .wmv, .asf that I have thrown at it. Streaming and downloaded media files.
I also made gmplayer and it works too. It keeps the correct aspect ratio when the video window is resized, contrast and brightness adjusts, makes better use of codecs I guess because it just works well.
I put it on a Fedora FC2 box but used the .tar package from Mplayers site.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html
You will have to have gcc and tools installed to compile. I wasn't able to find a .rpm for the Fedora box, not using yum. If you compile it yourself it'll make everything that it needs.
You will need codecs to play different types of media.
I took the "all" codec package and put it where the instructions suggest.
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html
Get yourself a skin or skins, and fonts if you need them.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html
I installed it on a Slack box too, launched even faster as you would expect from Slack. It works equally well on the Slack box. Haven't tried it on Mandrake yet. No reason that it should not work as well.
For new linux users, untar the MPlayer-1.0pre6.tar.bz2 file to a folder of your choosing. You can use arch or whatever GUI archiving tool if you don't like CLI (command line)
Or you can use tar. Read the man page for tar. man tar
Then read the README file
Good luck.
