no, it's jxvf, as it's a bz2 not a gz file, a la manpage the mplayer documentation is HUGE and VERY useful. make suer you have the new pre8 file.

Okay I installed pre8. There's not gui is there? Yeah I know I didn't read the manual yet, but just quickly how to I start up a DVD? lol.

Do you have to create a codecs.conf file in your $HOME/.mplayer directory?

I can play a regular .mpg clip, but having trouble with a DVD. What file do I need to play, or do i have to use a special switch?

Ah I figured it out:

mplayer -dvd 2

That works

there is a gui, it's just sucks, and it pretty pointless, just like most guis. you need to enable it with ./configure --enable-gui and use it with "gmplayer".

I'll forget about the gui for now. I'm just glad that I can play dvd's. Xine dvd was too difficult to install for a newbie to Linux. Thanks for your help.

One of the things that pisses me off about info and man pages is that they go into a lot of detail but they don't tell you how to simply use the command. I'm not looking to read any books when I just want to simply learn how to use a command!

Hi people.

Xine as you know is one of best movies players for Unixes.

Mplayer was better on early stage of development (< 0.6) in processing MPEG-4 movies (mainly by usage of tweaked OpenDiVX codec ). Today OpenDiVX is substed by GPL XVID codec used in Xine and Mplayer.

For newbies Xine is simpler.

To play encrypted DVD with Xine you need to install libdvddecrypt library (see the Xine's doc).

Xine's user configuration file located at ~/.xine/config

For better perfomance choose OSS (disable ARTS daemon in KDE ) audio output plugin and Xv (for hardware zooming; if Xvideo extension present) video output plugin.

Some drivers (ATI, i810, ..) with Xvideo support can be found at dri.sf.net. If you have Nvidia based card -download
binary drivers with Xvideo, TwinView and OpenGL support
from www.nvidia.com.

For GUI in Xine i prefer "cloudy" skin.

Cheers,
Sergiy Kudryk.

Normally there is a file named INSTALL or README which you may read when you'd like to compile and install the program. You may read it by typing
cat INSTALL | less